m 


CIHM 
Microfiche 
Series 
(l\/lonographs) 


ICI\AH 

Collection  de 
microfiches 
(monographies) 


C«n.dian  Imtituta  for  Historical  IMIcrortproductiont  /  Inditut  canadion  da  mieroraproduetion*  hiatoriquet 


Technical  and  Bibliographic  Notes  /  Notes  technique  et  biUlographiques 


The  Institute  has  anempted  to  obtain  the  best  original 
copy  available  for  filming.  Features  of  this  copy  which 
may  be  bibliogtaphlcally  unique,  which  may  alter  any  of 
the  Images  In  the  reproduction,  or  which  may 
significantly  change  the  usual  method  of  filming  are 
checked  below. 


0 


CokxiiBd  covers  / 
Couverture  de  couleur 


I     I     Covers  damaged  / 

' — '     Couverture  endommag*o 

I     I     Covets  restored  and/or  laminated  / 
— '     Couverture  restaur^  et/ou  pellicula 

I     I     Cover  title  missing /Le  litre  de  couverture  manque 

I     I     Coloured  maps/ Cartes  giographiques  en  couleur 

r^f    Cokxired  ink  (l.e.  other  than  blue  or  Ijlack)/ 
—      Encie  de  couleur  (i.e.  autre  que  Ueue  ou  noire) 

I     I     Cokxired  plates  and/or  illustretkxw/ 
Ptanches  et/ou  illustrattons  en  couleur 

I     I      Bound  with  other  material/ 

Reli*  avec  d'autres  documents 

I     I     Only  editnn  available/ 
' — '     SeuleMltkmdisponlble 

I  I  Tight  binding  may  cause  shadows  or  distortion 
along  Interior  margin  /  La  reliure  serrte  peut 
causer  de  I'ombre  ou  de  la  distotskxi  le  k)ng  de 
la  marge  intdrieure. 

I  I  Blank  leaves  added  during  restcialkxis  may  (vspear 
within  the  text.  Whenever  possible,  these  have 
been  omided  from  Nming  /  II  se  peut  que  certaines 
pages  blanches  ajouties  k>rs  d'une  restauration 
apparaissent  dans  la  texle,  mais,  kiisque  cela  etait 
possible,  ces  pages  n'ont  pas  M  Hmies. 


L'Institut  a  microfilm^  le  mellleur  examplaire  qu'il  lul  a 
6\6  possible  de  se  procurer.  Les  details  de  cet  exem- 
plalre  qui  sont  peut-fitre  uniques  du  point  de  vue  blbll- 
ographlque,  qui  peuvent  modifier  une  Image  reproduite, 
ou  qui  pecvent  exiger  une  modifications  dans  la  m6th- 
ode  normale  de  fllmage  sort  indiqu^  ci-dessous. 

I     I     CokHired  pages/ Pages  de  couleur 

I     I     Pages  damaged/ Pages  endommagies 

I     I     Pages  restored  and/or  laminated  / 
' — '     Pages  restaurtes  et/ou  pellk»iltes 

r^     Pages  discotoured,  stained  or  foxsd  / 
—      Pages  decok>i«es,  tachettes  ou  pk|u«es 

I     I     Pages  detached/ Pages  d«ach4es 

r^  Showlhrough/ Transparence 

I     I     Quality  of  print  varies  / 

I — I     QualM  inigale  de  I'impresston 

I     I     Includes  supplementary  material/ 

Comprend  di'  materiel  suppl6nientaire 

r~]  Pages  wholly  or  partially  obscured  by  errata 
slips,  tissues,  etc.,  have  been  relilmed  to 
ensure  the  best  possible  image  /  Les  pages 
totalement  ou  partlellement  obscurcies  par  un 
feulllet  d'errata,  une  pelure,  etc.,  ont  ete  filmies 
i  nouveau  de  fafon  k  obtenir  la  meilleure 
Image  possible. 

I  I  Opposing  pages  with  varying  colouration  or 
— '  discolouretions  are  filmed  twteo  to  ensure  the 
best  possible  image  /  Les  pages  s'opposant 
ayant  des  cok>rations  variat>les  ou  des  decol- 
orations sont  filmtes  deux  fols  atin  d'obtsnir  la 
mellleur  Image  possible. 


I     I      AddWonal  comments/ 

' — '     CommentaliesstfipWmentaires 


This  itsffl  it  f Hmid  St  th*  rtduetiwi  ntia  dMcksd  taslow/ 
Ct  dooMMnt  Mt  fihn*  <u  tau«  di  ridtictlon  indlqui  ei-dtsHHn. 
'OX  MX  1»X 


sx 


y 


12X 


2DX 


SOX 


Th«  copy  fllmad  hara  haa  baan  raproduead  thanki 
to  tha  ganaroiity  of: 

National  Library  of  Canada 


L'axamplaira  film*  fut  raprodult  grtea  i  la 
g*n4ro(it*  da: 

Blbllotheque  natlonale  du  Canada 


Tha  imasaa  appaaring  hara  ara  tha  bait  quality 
poaiibia  conaidaring  tha  condition  and  lagibillty 
of  tha  original  copy  and  in  liaaping  with  tha 
filming  contract  apacificationa. 


Original  eopiaa  in  printad  papar  eovara  ara  fllmad 
baginning  with  ttia  front  covar  and  anding  on 
tha  laat  paga  with  a  printad  or  iiluatratad  Impraa- 
alon,  or  tha  bacit  covar  whan  appropriat*.  All 
othor  original  eopiaa  ara  filmad  baginning  on  tha 
firat  paga  with  a  printad  or  iiluatratad  impraa- 
alon,  and  anding  on  tha  laat  paga  with  a  printad 
or  iiluatratad  impraaaion. 


Tha  laat  raeordad  frama  on  aach  mierofieha 
ahall  contain  tha  symbol  — » (moaning  "CON- 
TINUED"), or  tha  symbol  V  (moaning  "END"), 
whiehavar  appliaa. 

Mapa,  plataa,  charts,  ate.  may  ba  filmad  at 
diffarant  raduction  ratios.  Thosa  too  larga  to  ba 
antiraly  inciudad  in  ona  axposura  ara  filmad 
baginning  in  tha  uppar  laft  hand  eornar,  laft  to 
right  and  top  to  bottom,  aa  many  framas  aa 
raquirad.  Tha  following  diagrama  illustrata  tha 
mathod: 


Las  imagas  suivantas  ont  ttt  raproduitas  avsc  is 
plus  grand  soin.  eompta  tanu  da  la  condition  at 
da  la  nattat*  da  laiampiaira  film4,  at  an 
eonformita  avae  iaa  conditions  du  contrst  da 
filmaga. 

Laa  axamplalraa  origlnaux  dont  la  couvartura  an 
papiar  aat  lmprim«a  sont  flimta  an  commancant 
par  la  pramiar  plat  at  an  tarminant  soit  par  la 
darnMra  paga  qui  comporta  una  amprainta 
d  impraaaion  ou  d'lllustration,  soit  par  la  tacond 
plat,  salon  la  caa.  Tous  las  autras  axamplairas 
originaux  sont  film«s  an  commandant  par  la 
pramitra  paga  qui  comporta  una  amprainta 
d  impraaaion  ou  d'lllustration  at  an  tarminant  par 
la  darnitra  paga  qui  comporta  una  tails 
amprainta. 

Un  daa  aymbolaa  suivants  ipparaitra  sur  la 
darnltra  Imaga  da  chaqua  mierofieha.  salon  la 
eaa:  la  symbols  — V'Signifis  "A  SUIVRE".  la 
symbols  ▼  signifia  "FIN". 

Las  cartas,  planchas.  tsbiaaux.  ate.,  pauvant  itra 
filmto  t  das  tauii  da  raduction  diffarsnts. 
Lorsqua  la  documant  ast  ttop  grand  pour  itra 
raprodult  an  un  saul  eileh*.  II  aat  filmt  l  partir 
da  I'angia  supiriaur  gaucha.  da  gaucha  i  droita. 
at  da  haut  an  bas.  an  pranant  la  nombra 
d'imagaa  ntcaaaaira.  Las  diagrammas  suivants 
lllustrant  la  mathoda. 


1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

•"aOCOW   IBOIUTION   TBI  CHADT 

(ANSI  and  ISO  TEST  CHART  No.  2) 


I.I 


laizj 

■  2J 

la  ^ 

■^ 

lit  1^ 

■  2.2 

•a  .,. 

Im 

1^ 


1.8 
.6 


^  .APPLIED  IIVMGE     In 

^^^  1653  East  Main  5tr««t 

^£  RochMler,    Neo   York         UbC9        USA 

^S  (^16)  288-5969  -To. 


; 


THE  BEAST 


z.  / 


./ 


lv'7763 


COTOIOBT,  I,.o,  BV  roratlDAY,  »A0.    *  COIUAX, 
ICBUIHIS,  AMll,  igio 


""W  iiot  had  room  to  tnentum  ■  /;,„  ,/. 
^ko.e  narnes  I  do  not  e^  ^  "'"^ 

fi.  fi.  L. 


^fidthey  fling  Ai„,  hour  by  A^, 
f^r  "/  "«»  to  Jiw  Am  power  ■ 
Bramtofmmto  give  Mm  cmni„g  .  w 

for  datnhei  to  devour 
Childrm',  .ouU.  the  litOe  u,crth.-  hearU 

of  women,  cheaply  bought  : 
Betake,  them  and  he  break,  them,  but 
K*  J»»«  then  teanty  thought." 

The  Brttte 
by  WiUiam  Vaughn  MaOy. 


NOTE 

of  leisure,  and  they  tere  nol  t  T^  "  "'"'^*'^ 
they  could  be  publLId  Th.  ^  v  ^""^  "  ^'''^'» 
J,  O'Higgfns'to  Detr^o^i"S«;-^ 
Lindsey  on  them,  this  book  is  tie  resS  Xf^^ 
joint  work  but  the  autobiograpWc  "l"  of  T  !?  * 
Lmdsey's  first  draft  has  beS  Jr^serJed  L  ^' 
the  voice  is  still  hiAr,^  t  •  j  P'^served,  because 
that  report.  It  11 2^;°*^'^  ''  '''-«l»  the  pen 


I. 

II. 

III. 

IV. 

V. 

VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 

XI. 

XII. 
XIII. 
XIV. 

XV. 

XVI. 

XVII. 

XVIII. 


CONTENTS 

Introduction       .  '"' 
xi 

The  Beast g 

Fmdbg  the  Cat .    .     .                   '  ^ 

The  Cat  Purrs    ...'..',]  jg 

The  Cat  Keeps  on  Purring    ...  44 

The  Beast  in  the  Democracy     .     .  55 

The  Beast  in  the  County  Court .     .  74 

The  Beast  and  the  Children  .     .     .  95 

The  Beast,  Graft  and  Business       .  1 13 

At  Work  with  the  Children    ...  133 

The  Beast  and  the  Ballot  153 

The  Beast  at  Bay 185 

The  Beast  and  the  Supreme  Court  20S 

The  Beast  and  Reform      .  220 

A  City  Pillaged   .....'.'.'  337 
The  Beast,    the  Church   and  the 

trovernorship       ^^„ 

Hunting  the  Beast  ......     ggl 

A  Victory  at  Last     ......    299 

Conclusion .323 


INTRODtCTlON 


JuDGKLrnDsEv  .s  known  to  the  world  at  large 
for  h.,  work  ,n  the  Juvenile  Court  of  DeS 
and,  to  his  little  courtroon,  there,  come  CWWren 
Society  agents  from  all  parts  of  the  states  vf,T 
lors  f„,m  England,  officers  from  Germany  a„d 
CTd  T'^'T'  "r  S-'l-.  A^trra 

H^::ti1;:;:r3-srt^s 

friends,  and  — most  of  nil       .     .  .  ""'^^''/o  nis 

famous  wiircl:it-^;tTnX?*; 

itrV  ^°"*"  r«''  •"  '^^  -an's  amalg 
career     For  years   he  has   been   engaged   in   a 

wS  o^ni:^*^'  "^  '°"°j!'"«  «^  ^^  WnT  Court 
was  only  the  merest  skirmish 

to'fi  VA'"  ""*'  ^^'  *=«"'«d  him  into  politics 
to  find  both  political  parties  against  hC  It 
bas  been  carried  on  without  the  coLLtent  support 
of  any  newspaper,  and  with  now  one.  now  th^ 
other,  and  at  limes  all  the  party  organs  in  Den 
ver  cartooning  and  attacking  hi'm.    The  thifves 

titutfT      T  "^\^^''"^°  '^^^P-^  -°d  th    pro:: 
titutes  have  been  cheered  on  against  him.    There 

bei;afrd;"-!,r'^°  ^^^"  '^^^  churches  h:;: 

been  afraid  to  aid  him.    The  men  of  wealth-th,. 
heads  of  thestreet  railway,  the  telephn^^iLVi; 


"■'■  INTRODUCTION 

the  gas  and  electric  comnanv  lh#.  ».. 
pany.  and  n.0,1  of  the  otro^ter  ZT  T' 
and  combinations  of  finance  h„v^^^"""' 
their  particular  amb  lion  a„d  "iL.  ."".'''  ''' 
beat  him  down  anrcrush  hi  P?"°""'  *™  to 
He  has  fought  aLne  1?  r  ""!  "'  P"**''^  '''«• 
And  he  is  s'll  fiX?'"  ""^^  «''-'"'«^'y  alone. 

n^iL'a^e.'^H^etst.'n"'"''  '''•''^'"'■«'''  ^"^  " 
politics,  a  fortune  i^la^"  S^h^Tt  "  ""*'"  '" 
hope  of  worldly  Dreferm.n,  .v.  .  ^^"  «'^™  '*>« 
the  highest  am'bigoi"'^Cn  fhl'f '  ^r 
to  win  him,  he  has  beeh  f W  !  ,  ^^''^  ^"'''"1 
punishment;  that  he  mo  ^Tn^"^  V'^  ""  ">e 
-d  the  bitterest  Wr,d""creC\rr 

Jt^jLttTLtnUi^^  «ffi<iavirhav:"^: 

lowest  forms'o?";  Ar^nTT'^'™  °^  "•« 
to  lure  him  to  hou  es  of1"  r  »'  T  ''""''  "«^ ' 
Iy»g  in  wait  to  e:;osetSP"'5,r''>-«"-were 

about  him  have  Cn  d  Tul.^^d  ,"  "'  '"""'' 
whispers  from  man  to  rr,«„T  venomous 

Pr-ends  have  b^n  friX  ^T**  7""*"  '°  ^'""*''- 
from  him  Hflffe  hf  r'"*  u'  ^°"^'''  «'  ^"ven 
'aws  have  been  il„!?    !!"  '^^'^^^^n-d-    Special 

against  him  XSen'rCh'  t  ''/'^  ^'p''"" 
has  publiclv  brandi^  r     ^^^"^^^  "f  Commerce 

At  times  the  vervl^ht  ™  v  '"''"^"  **'  '^'  ^"''e- 

House  have  bIe?cSS  "  at  hT^  ^'  '''^  ^""^ 

-oyanceofspitr-t^r'^ir-^'^r^^^^^ 


INTRODUCTION  xiii 

Ihe  comer  drugstore  at  night  and   buy  himself 
candles  to  continue  his  work! 

m.f  »''''^J    1°'  "^^^  •""  '>«'  »^n  fighting? 
What  terrible  thing  has   he   sought   to   attaiJ? 
Read  hu,  story.     Here  it  is.  as  told  by  himsSf 
without    malice,    in    a    sort    of   good-humS 
md.gnat.on.  with  a  smile  that  is  sLetimerSr 
m  spite  of  a  patience  that  seems  beyond  words 
It  IS  a  stoiy  that  would  be  appalling  if  it  we.^ 
not  for  the  fact  that  through  it  all  he  hiTelJ 
moves  m  the  yeiy  figure  of  hope.    It  is  a  sto^tha 
»  true  not  only  of  Denver  but  of  any  other  Amerf! 
can  city  in  which  a  Lmdsey  might  appear,     it 
«  a  s  o^  of  the  fight  of  one  man  against   the 
conditions  that  threaten  to  make  the  American 
democracy  a  failure  in  government  and  a  flrc^ 
in  the  eyes  of  the  world. 

And   it   is  a  story  of  achievement.     Wi  /  out 
money,    without   powerful    friends,    without    the 
dommating  qualities   of   a   personal   popularity 
this  one  man.  m  an  obscure  struggle,  h^  written 
upon  the  statute  books  of  ColoLo.  laws  S 
He  been  copied  round  the  world.     He  has  codi- 

f«!^-,''/°J'^  l"^''  P"'^^  ^'^''""n  '«^s.  and 
msttuted  a  reform  in  criminal  jurisprudence  that 
IS  as  revolutiona^  m  our  day  as  the  teachings  of 

Jew  Th:  'r  ^:«yr'°'"-eye>'  days  of  the 
Jews     The    list    of   reforms    he    has    obtained 

tut^^rH'Tf-"';  P"'''^  improvements  ins^: 
tuted  and  political  steals  balked,  shows  nearly  a 


xiv  INTRODUCTION 

hundred  items.  He  has  obtained  nothing  for  him- 
self  but  the  praise  and  support  of  some  citizens 
of  Denver,  and  the  curse  and  enmity  of  others. 
The  Reverend  Henry  Augustus  Buchtel,  Chancel- 
lor of  the  Denver  University,  and  ex-Govemor 
of  the  State  of  Colorado,  in  the  year  1904,  coupled 
his  name  with  Christ's— no  less!  — and  in  the 
year  1907  called  him,  through  the  newspapers,  "a 
nincompoop"  and  a  "fice  dog"!  Those  are'the 
two  crowns  that  have  been  offered  him:  a  halo 
and  a  fool's  cap.  Which  shall  it  be.'  To  vhich 
is  he  entitled  in  the  eyes  of  the  democracy  whose 
battle  he  is  helping  to  fight  ? 

Here  follows  the  evidence.    The  choice  shall  be 
your  own. 

H.  J.  O'H. 


THE  BEAST 


THE  BEAST 

itntani  J'"  T"  ""'  ''^^^  «^°^^d  ^  forest 
ot  entangled  branches,  tree  trunks,  fallen  timber 

that  ,f  "^f.-'^-b^^h;  and  the  problem  w^t 

^rannh  ''^^  r''""   °^    ^    *««    among    the 

branches;  you  sp..d  a  paw  in  the  crook  of  1 1  ee 

rth/r  T^f  °"'  ''^^  ^^'''''  °f  ">«  -"'"al's  body 

n  the  bark  of  a  trunk;  an  ear  pricked  up  from 

the  underbrush;  an  eye  stared  from  the  boL  of 

a  fal  en  tree.     And  when,  turning  the  picture  on 

•ts   s.de,   you   gathered   those   clues   toSe'  i^ 

17  '^l' r'^'^^-^'  y°"  ^^--'■ot  the  housed 
cat  you  had  expected,  but  the  great  "cat"  oMll 
jungle,  crouching  there,  with  such  a    h  eatenl 

S    na  iistenmg  m  the  lowest  underbrush 

_4 


4  THE  BEAST 

and  fallen  timber  of  our  life.  It  is  there  —  wait- 
ing. To  some  it  has  appeared  to  be  a  house  cat 
merely;  and  it  has  purred  to  them  very  soothingly, 
no  doubt.  But  some  have  come  upon  its  claws, 
and  they  have  been  rather  more  than  scratched. 
And  others  have  found  its  teeth,  and  they  have 
been  bitten  —  bitten  to  the  soul.  A  few,  who 
have  watched  it  and  stalked  it  carefully,  know 
that  it  is,  at  the  last,  very  like  the  dragon  in  the 
old  fable  of  Greece,  to  whom  some  of  the  people 
were  daily  sacrificed.  For  it  lives  upon  us.  Yes, 
it  lives  upon  us  —  upon  the  best  of  us  as  well  as 
the  worst  — and  the  daughters  of  the  poor  are 
fed  to  it  no  less  than  the  sons  of  the  rich.  If  you 
save  your  life  from  it,  it  is  at  the  price  of  your 
liberty,  of  your  humanity,  of  your  faith  with  your 
fellows,  whom  you  must  hand  over  to  it,  helpless. 

And  if  you  attack  it ! 

I  propose  to  tell,  in  this  story  of  my  own  experi- 
ence, what  happens  if  you  attack  it.  I  propose  to 
show  the  Beast  from  its  tail  to  its  nose-tip,  and 
to  show  it  as  it  is  when  it  has  ceased  to  purr 
and  bares  its  teeth.  I  propose  to  mark  its  trail  and 
name  its  victims,  to  warn  you  of  where  it  lurks 
and  how  it  springs.  I  do  not  hope  to  set  you  on 
in  any  organized  assault  upon  it— for  I  have 
learned  that  this  is  too  much  to  hope  —  but  I 
trust  that  I  shall  be  able  to  show  you  where  the 
fight  agauist  it  is  being  fought,  so  that  you  may 
at  least  recognize  your  cv.n  defenders  and  not 


THE  BEAST  5 

■I  he  Beast  m  the  jungle!    How  it  fi„f,f=.     a 
-an  who  truthfull/wnL  the  sTo^^  offi  ea^' 
paigns  agabst  it  will  not  write  fromTnvl,  ?•         I 

colli.  J  with  Kle     S't"'-,"'."  ""■ 
enemy.    There  is  no  other  way     Tu  .  ^^"" 


CHAPTER  I 

FINDINO  THE   CAT 

mmmM 

magnificence      T  hnH  k       ™'^»<^'e  of  height   and 

and  we  had  been  entertained  on  thf  way  bvT' 
stones  of  an  old  forty-niner  with  .  ^  ^  ^ 
tache.  who  told  us  how  "e  had  ^ot  ^h'^ff  T°"'' 
those  prairies  where  we  now  saw  oSy  an'l?  "^T 
was  not  precocious;  his  stories  ilterlf^P  ' 
than  anything  eise'on  the":;;  "l^  TT^H 
so  hard  at  the  old  pioneer  that  I  ti:.  u  '^*^ 

him  now.  I  believerif  I  /arnl^  tS  ;S:r« 

7 


8  THE  BEAST 

My  schooling  was  not  peculiar;  there  was  noth- 
ing  holier  than  thou"  in  my  bringing  up.  My 
father,  bemg  a  Roman  Catholic  convert  from  the 
Episcopalian  Church,  sent  me  to  Notre  Dame 
Indiana,  to  be  educated;  and  there,  to  be  sure  I 
read  the  "Lives  of  the  Saints,"  aspired  to  fc/ a 
samt  and  put  pebbles  in  my  small  shoes  to  "mor- 
tify he  flesh,  because  I  was  told  that  a  good 
priest,  Father  Hudson -whom  I  all  but  ^. 
shipped  -  used   to  do  so.    But  even   at   Notre 

STf '  *!l  T"^  """'^  "  °«°^«''  I  ^'^  home- 
sick  for  the  farm;  arid  at  last  I  was  allowed  to 
return  to  Ja.,.son  to  be  cared  for  by  my  Protestant 
relatives.  They  sent  me  to  a  Baptisf  sch^S  UI 
I  was  seventeen.  And  when  I  was  recalled  to 
Denver  because  of  the  failure  of  my  father's 
health.  I  went  to  work  to  help  earn  for  the  house- 
hold, with  no  strong  attachment  for  any  church 
and  with  no  recognized  membership  in  any 

bir'''"'!"  ^^"'^  'V  °°^  ^'^^  ^"'^  not  look 
back  upon  his  past  and  wonder  what  he  should  have 
become  m  life  if  this  or  that  crucial  event  had 

that  ifThl  .f  ^i  •^"""^-  "  -^-«  to  ^- 
that  ,f  It  had  not  been  for  the  sudden  deuth  of  my 

father  I,   oo,  might  have  found  our  jungle  beast 

a  domestic  tabby,  and  have  fed  it  its  prey  withou 

reahzmg  what  I  w,..s  about.     I  should  Led 

a  lawyer,  I  know;  .or  I  had  had  that  ambE; 

from  my  earliest  boyhood,  and  I  had  been  cZ 

farmed  m  it  by  my  success  in  debating  at  school 


I 


FINDING  THE  CAT  « 

Colorado  was  the  'W,».     Proposition    that 

and  proved  aetttCt ;'"','  "  'l'^  Union." 
Ri.f  T  .u     ij        .  '  ^  '^*'^  «  lawyer's  "winrf  "1 

compelh-ng  handTl'e  ^andtv"'!  "',"'  "•'''' 
them  began.  ^  struggle  with 

iand  officerio^eLrtrtrh^JSef^r- 

emment  land;  and  I  had  slv^  8i50^f    °"  ^°'^- 
before  my  work  there  cea^S      I  foil  ""V"^""^ 

b;lreo^^d':^rcteT  ?«'  -^^^^^^^^^^^ 

denied  having  received  ^L'''  '''"'P''  ''^^  ^S™' 
had  lapsed  of  thei;'beteTSi.  ''^  1"''^^ 
"""d  we  got  nothing  0.,^^  ^-^  ^^''  '^^*"^' 
mortgaged-  wc  wei^^^li  ^  "f"'"^  '^"'^  been 
furnifhTlitU  LTse  oX^^^T^'^  °^  "  '« 
later  we  moved  to  a  r^l  f^  '^^•'""^=  «°d 


^^  THE  BEAST 

the  office  opened,  and  did  janitor  work  at  niehl 
when  .t  closed.  After  a  month  of  that.  I  gTa 
better  place,  as  office  boy.  with  a  mining  con,! 
pany.  at  a  salary  of  m  a  month.  And  finally 
my  younger  brother  found  work  in  a  law  office 
and  I  swapped  jobs"  with  him  -  because  I 
wished  to  study  law!  "^tuuse  i 

It  was  the  office  of  Mr.  R.  D.  Thompson,  who 
still  practises  m  Denver;  and  his  example  as  an 
incorrupt.bly  honest  lawyer  has  been  one  of  the 
best  and  strongest  influences  of  my  life. 

I  had  that   one  ambition  -  to   be  a   lawyer 
Associated  with  it  I  seem  to  have  had  an  unusuai 
curiosity  about  politics.     And  where  I  got  either 
he  ambition  or  the  curiosity.  I  haye'no  idea 
My  father  s  mother  was  a  Greenleaf.*  and  related 
to  the  author  of  "Greenleaf  on  Eyidence."  but 
my  father  himself  had  nothing  of  the  legal  mind. 
As  a  boy,  I.ying  m  Mississippi,  he  had  joined  the 
Confederate   army   when   he   was   prepai   -g  for 
the  Uniyersity  o    Virginia,  had  attained  the  rank 
of  captain,  had  become  General  Forrest's  private 
secretary   and  had  written  -  or  largely  helped  to 
write -General     Forrest's     autobiography      He 
was  ideahstic.  enthusiastic,  of  an  inyenli/e  gen! 
lus  with  a  really  remarkable  command  of  English 
and  an  absorbing  love  of  books.     My  mother's' 
father  was  a  Barr.   from   the   north   of  Ireland. 
a_Scotch-Irish   Presbyterian;  her  mother  was  a 

•A  New  England  family,  to  which  the  poet  Whittier  wa,  relatrf. 


I 


FINDING  THE  CAT  n 

oclist.     The  members  of  the  family  were  practical 

be„t.^^that   I   know  of.   toward   either    ,aw    "o^ 

And  yet  one  of  the  most  vivid  memories  of  mv 
chrldhood  m  Jackson  is  of  attending  a  1^^ 
mUy  w.h  my  grandfather  and  heaLg  a  S 

that  for  years  af^^'aS  I^^e^ersTw^V  Re2 

g^'?si:Ttm!rSn^-rs 

myself  mto  Mr.  Thompson's  office    I  17. 

prejudices,  I  do  not  know  what  it  is 

However  my  own  observations "  of  what  was 
gomg  on  about  me  were  already  opening  my  eyes 
I  had  read,  m  the  newspapers,  of  how  the  Denver 
Repubica,  won  the  elections  by  fraud -bv 
ba  lot-box  stuffing  and  what  not  -  and  i  had 
lollowed   one   "C!r.nr».,"    o    vi  ^" 

from    Dre^J  t    ?    ^^    •  ^""^    °"    '^^    streets, 
irom    precir  t    to    pr^cmct,    with    his    gang    of 


J*  THE  BEAST 

election  Ihfevcs.  and  had  seen  them  vote  not  once 
but  five  times  openly.    I  had  seen  a  young  man, 
whom  I  knew,  knocked  down  and   arrested   for 
"Sl""^.  t  ^"'"'••""»'=*'"   when   he   objected   to 
Soapy     Smith's  proceeding;  and  the  policeman 
who  arrested  him  did  it  with  a  smile  and  a  wink. 
When  I  came  to  Mr.  Thompson  to  ask  him  how 
be.  a  Republican,  could  countenance  such  thines. 
he  assured  me  that  much  of  what  I  had    b^n 
readmg  and   hearing  of  election   frauds  was  a 
lie  — the  mere  "whine"  of  the  defeated  party  - 
and  I  saw  that  he  believed  what  he  said.    I 
knew  that  he  was  an  honest,  upright  man;  and  I 
was  puzzled.     What  puzzled  me  still  more  was  this : 
although  the  ministers  in  the  churches  and  "prom- 
inent citizens  "  in  all  walks   of   life   denounced 
the      election   crooks"   with   the  most  laudable 
fervour,  the  election  returns  showed  that  the  best 
people  in  the  churches  joined  the  worst  people 
in  the  dives  to  vote  the  same  ticket,  and  vote  it 
straight.       And  I  was  most  of  all  puzzled  to 
find  that  when  the  elections  were  over,  the  oppo- 
sition  newspaper  ceased  its  scolding,  the  voice 
of  mmisterial  denunciation  died  away,  and  the 
crimes   of   the   election   thieves   were   condoned 
and  forgotten. 

I  was  puzzled.  I  saw  the  jungle  of  vice  and 
party  prejudice,  but  I  did  not  yet  see  "the  Cat  " 
I  saw  Its  ears  and  its  eyes  there  in  the  under- 
brush, but  I  did  not  know  what  they  were     I 


FINDING  THE  CAT  13 

thought  they  were  connected  wilh  the  RepuWi- 
can  party.  ^     " 

And  then  I  came  upon  some  more  of  the  brute's 
anatomy.     Members  of  the  Legislature  in  Denver 
were  accused  of  fraud  in  the  purchase  of  state 
supplies    and -some   months    later  -  members 
of  the  city  government  were  accused  of  commit- 
tmg  similar  frauds  with  the  aid  of  civic  officials 
r.nd  prominent  business  men.     It  was  proved  in 
court^  for  example,  that  bills  for  $3   had   been 
raised  to  $300.  that  $800  had  been  paid  foH 
bundle  of  hay  worth  $3.  and  $50  for  a  yard  of 
cheesecloth  worth  five  cents;  barrels  of  ink  had 
been  bought  ^r  each  legislator,  though  a  pint 
would  have  sufficed;  and  an  official  of  the  Po^  ce 
Department  was  found  guilty  of  conniving  with  a 
gambler  nan.ed  "Jim"  Marshall  to  rob  an  express 

at  the  meetmgs  of  leading  citizens  who  denounced 
the  grafters  and  pa.s.d  resolutions  in  support 
of  the  candidates  of  the  opposition  partV  I 
waited  to  see  the  crimmals  punished.  And  they 
wej  not  punished  Their  crimes  were  not  denied 
They  were  publicly  denounced  by  the  courts  and 
by  the  mvestigatmg  committees,   but   somehow 

appeals.     Some  mysterious  power  protected  them, 
and  I,  m  the   boyish   ardour   of   my   ignorance 


14 


THE  BEAST 


(to  me)  great  confederation  of  righteousness  and 
all-decent  government,  the  Democratic  party. 

It  would  be  laughable  to  me  now,  if  it  were 
not  so  "sort  of  sad." 

Meanwhile,  I  was  busy  about  the  office,  copy- 
ing letters,  running  errands,   carrying   books   to 
and  from  the  court  rooms,  reading  law  in  the 
intervals,  and  at  night  scrubbing  the  floors.     I 
was  pale,  thin,  big-headed,  with  the  body  of  an 
underfed  child,  and  an  ambition  that  kept  me 
up  half  the  night  with  Von  Hoist's  "Constitu- 
tional Law,"   Walker's  "American  Law,"   or  a 
sheepskin  volume  of  Lawson's  "Leading  Cases 
in  Equity."     I  was  so  mad  to  save  every  penny 
I  could  earn  that  ins'.ead  of  buying  myself  food 
for    luncheon,    I    ale   molasses   and   gingerbread 
that  all  but  turned  my  stomach;  and  I  was  so 
eager  to  learn  my  law  that  I  did  not  take  my 
sleep  when  I  could  get  it.     The  result  was  that  I 
was  stupid  at  my  tasks,  moody,  melancholy,  and 
so  sensitive  that  my  employer's  natural  dissat- 
isfaction with  my  work  put  me  mto  agonies  of 
shame  and  despair  of  myself.     I  became,  as  the 
boys  say,  "dopy."     I  remember  that  one  night, 
after  I  had  scrubbed  the  floors  of  our  offices,  I 
took  off  the  old  trousers  in  which  I  had  been 
working,    hung   them    in    a    closet,    and    started 
home;  and  it  was  not  until  the  cold  wind  struck 
my  bare  knees  that  I  realized  I  was  on  the  street 
in  my  shirt.    Often,  when  I  was  given  a  brief 


I 


15 


FINDING  THE  CAT 

to  work  up  for  Mr.  ^  hompson,  I  would  slave  over 
It  until  the  small  hcu,  of  the  morning  and  then, 
o  his  disgust-  ..nd  my  u.npeakable  mortifica- 
tion-find that  r.;y  work  .vas  valueless,  that  I 
had  not  seized  Vu-  f  li^damental  points  of  the 
case,  or  that  I  had  built  all  my  arguments  on 
some  misapprehension  of  the  law. 

Worse   than   that,   I   was   unhappy  at   home. 
Poverty  was  fraying  us  all  out.     If  it  was  not 
exactly  brutalizing  us,  it  was  warping  us,  break- 
mg   our   healths    and    ruining   our   dispositions. 
My  good  mother -married   out  of  a  beautiful 
Southern  home  where  she  had  lived  a  life  that 
(as   I   remembered   it)    was   all   horseback   rides 
and   Negro   servants -had   started    out  bravely 
m  this  debasing  existence  in  a  shanty,  but  it  was 
wearing   her  out      She   was   passing   through   a 
critical  period  of  her  life,  and  she  had  no  care  no 
comforts      I  have  often  since  been    ashamed  of 
myself  that  I  did  not  sympathize  with   her  and 
understand  her,  but  I  was  too   young  to  under- 
stand, and  too  miserable  myself  to  sympathize. 
It  seemed  to  me  that  my  life  was  not  worth  liv- 
ing -  that  every  one  had  lost  faith  in  me  -  that 
I  should  never  succeed  in  the  law  or  anything  else 
-that  I  had  no  brains -that  I  should  never 
do  anything  but  scrub  floors  and  run  messages 
And  after  a  day  that  had  been  more  than  usually 
discouraging   in    the   office    and    an    evening   of 
exasperated  misery  at  home,  I  got  a  revolver  and 


In 

h 

m  f 

I  ^ 


^«  THE  BEAST 

some  cartridges,  locked  myself  in  my  room,  con- 
fronted myself  desperately  in  the  miLr.  p;t7e 

p3S Vit^r^^^  ^^^'°'  '«  -y  -Pfe.  and 
The  hammer  snapped  sharply  on  the  cart- 
ridge;  a  great  wave  of  horror  and  revulsion  swept 
over  me  ,n  a  rush  of  blood  to  my  head,  and  I 
dropped  the  revolver  on  the  floor  and  threw  myself 
on  my  bed.  ■' 

By  some  miracle  the  cartridge  had  not  exploded; 
but  the  nervous  shock  of  that  instant  when  I  felt 
he  tngger  yield  and  the  muzzle  rap  against  my 
forehead  w.th  the  impact  of  the  hammer  -  that 
shock  was  almost  as  great  as  a  very  bullet  in  the 
bram.  I  reahzed  my  folly,  my  weakness;  and  I 
went  back  to  my  life  wlih  something  of  a  man' 
determmafon  to  crush  the  circumstances  that 
had  almost  crushed  me. 

Why   do  I   tell   that?    Because   there   are  so 
many  people  in  the  world  who  believe  that  pov- 
erty IS  not  sensitive,  that  the  ill-fed,  overworked 
boy  of  the  slums  ,s  as  callous  as  he  seems  dull 
Because  so  many  people  believe  that  the  weak  and 
desperate  boy  can  never  be  anything  but  a  weak 
and  VICIOUS  mun      Because  I  came  out  of  that 
morbid  period  of  adolescence  with  a  sympathy 
for  children  that  helped  to  make  possible  one  of 
the  first   courts  established  in  America  for  the 
protection  as  well  as  the  correction  of  children 
Because   I    was   never   afterward    as    afraid    of 


FINDING  THE  CAT  17 

kl-^s!  TJ  "{  ""  V'^''"-^.  -y  own  coward- 
h!  ^  7^^^°  "'^  "g^'^'«  of  the  Beast  in 
the  courts  and  in  politics  threatened  me  with 
all  the  abominations  of  their  rage  if  I  did  not 
commit  moral  suicide  for  them,  m^y  fear  of  yidd 
^^  to  them  was  so  great  that  I 'attacked  th  m 
more  desperately  than  ever. 
It  was  about  this  time,  too,  that  I  first  saw  the 

eater.  That  was  dunng  the  conflict  between 
Governor  Waite  and  the  Fire  and  Police  Boa  3 
of  Denver.  He  had  the  appointment  and  removal 
of  the  members  of  this  Board,  under  the  law,  and 
when  they  refused  to  close  the  public  gambling 
houses  and  otherwise  enforce  the  laws  againsf 
vice  m  Denver  ^  ■  read  them  out  o,  office.  tS 
refused  to  go  ,efied  him,  with  the  police  2 

their  backs  H.  threatened  to  call  out  the  militL 
and  dnve  them  from  the  City  Hall.  The  who  e 
town  was  m  an  uproar. 

lowed  the  excited  crowds  to  Coliseum  Hall  to 
hear    he  Governor  speak,  and  I  had  seen  him 

S  belT  "i'  '''''■"^  P^'^P'^^''  -'th  his  long 
white  beard  and  patriarchal  head  of  hair,  and 

denomice  miquity  and  political  injustice  and 
he  oppressions  of  the  predatory  rich.  He  appealed 
to  the  Bible  in  a  calm  prediction  that,  if  the  reign 
of  lawlessness  did  not  cease,  in  time  to  come  "  bloS 
would  flow  m  the  land  even  unto  the  horses' 


'8  THE  BEAST 

bridles  "     (And  he  earned  for  himself,  thereby 

the  nickname  of  "  Bloody  Bridles  "  Waite  ) 

Now   it   began   to  appear  that  his  prediction 
was  about  to  come  true;  for  he  called  out  the 
militia.   and  the  Board  armed  the  police.     Mv 
brother  was  a  militiaman,  and  I  kept  pace  with 
him  as  his  regiment  marched  from  the  Armouries 
to   attack  the  City  Hall.     There  were  riflemen 
on  the  towers  and  m  the  windows  of  that  build- 
ing; and  on  the  roofs  of  the  houses  for  blocks 
around  were  sharpshooters  and  armed  gamblers 
and  the  defiant  agents  of  the  powers  who  were 
behind  the  Police  Board  in  their  fight.     Gatlin^ 
guns   were  rushed   through   the  sf^eets;  cannon 
were  tramed  on  the  City  Hall;  tl      .ng  lines  of 
militia  were  drawn  up  before  the  building;  and 
amid   the  excited   tumult   of  the  mob  and   the 
deventh-hour  conferences   of  the  Committee  of 
i^ibhc  Safety,  and  the  hurry  of  mounted  officers 
and  the  marching  of  troops,  we  all  waited  with 
our  hearts  in  our  mouths  for  the  report  of  the  first 
shot.     Suddenly,    in    the    silence    that    expected 
the  storm,  we  heard  the  sound  of  bugles  from 
the  direction  of  the  railroad  station,  and  at  the 
head  of  another  army  -  a  body  of  Federal  soldiers 
ordered  from  Fort  Logan  by  President  Cleveland, 
at  the  frantic  call  of  the  Committee  of  Public 
Safety  — a   mounted    officer    rode    between    the 
hues  of  militia  and  police,  and  m  the  name  of 
the  President  commanded  peace. 


FINDING  THE  CAT  19 

The  militia  withdrew.  The  crowds  dispersed 
The  police  and  their  partisans  put  up  their  guns 
and  the  Beast,  still  defiant,  went  back  sullenly  to 
cover.  Not  until  the  Supreme  Court  had  decided 
that  Governor  Waite  had  the  right  and  the  power 
to  unseat  the  Board  —not  till  then  was  the  City 
Hall  surrendered;  and  even  so,  at  the  next  election 
(the  Beast  turning  polecat),  "Bloody  Bridles" 
Waite  was  defeated  after  a  campaign  of  lies 
ridicule,  and  abuse,  and  the  men  whom  he  had 
opposed  were  returned  to  office. 

I  had  eyes,  but  I  did  not  see.  I  thought  the 
whole  quarrel  was  a  personal  matter  between  the 
Police  Board  and  Governor  Waite,  who  seemed 
determined  merely  to  show  them  that  he  was  mas- 
ter; and  if  my  young  brother  had  been  shot  down 
by  a  policeman  that  night,  I  suppose  I  should 
have  joined  ia  the  curses  upon  poor  old  "Bloody 
Bridles."  ' 

However,  my  prospects  in  the  office  had  begun 
to  improve.  I  had  had  my  salary  raised,  and  I 
had  ceased  doing  janitor  work.  I  had  become 
more  of  a  clerk  and  less  of  an  office  boy.  A  num- 
ber of  us  "kidc"  had  got  up  a  moot  court,  rented 
a  room  to  meet  in,  and  finally  obtained  the  use  of 
another  room  in  the  old  Denver  University  build- 
ing, where,  in  the  gaslight,  we  used  to  hold  "quiz 
classes  and  defend  imaginary  cases.  (That  by 
the  way.  was  the  beginnuig  of  the  Denver  Uni'ver- 
sity  Law  School.)     J  read  my  Blackstone,  Kent, 


''^  THE  BEAST 

l"ri~r^^^  "•^'''  """^  '^^y  -  ^^'i  I  began 
really  to  get  some  sort  of  "grasp  of  the  law" 

m^  A^r^  1  '         Thompson  would  eive 

me  demurrers  to  argue  in  court- anrJ  k.  .       K*^® 
told  that  T  Koj      T  '^°"«.  and,  havmg  been 

juiy  cscs,  and  it  set  me  on  my  feet 

A  man  had  been  held  by  the  law  nn  = 
-nts  of  obtaining  goods  under^ /alle  pre LlJ 
He  had  been  tried  on  the  first  count  by  araTsist: 
ht^'HrhaTbr^'^'  ''^  ^"^^  "^^^  -q""   cl 
^^er^t^-hras^y^^^^^^^ 

fj,„  •         I  P' *^ '° 'he  person  defraudpd 

-the  jury,  by  good  luck,  found  against  him  it 
was  the  turning  point  in  my  struggle  I  give  me 
ccmfidence  m  myself;  and  it  taufht  J  !Z2 

Andnow  I  began  to  come  upon  "the  Cat"  again. 


FINDING  THE  CAT  21 

.  I  knew  a  lad  named  Smith,  whom  I  considered 
a  victim  of  malpractice  at  the  hands  of  a  Denver 
surgeon  whose  brother  was  at  the  head  of  one  of 
the  great  smelter  companies  of  Colorado.  The 
boy  had  suffered  a  fracture  of  the  thigh-bone,  and 
the  surgeon  —because  of  a  hasty  and  ill-consid- 
ered diagnosis,  I  believed— had  treated  him  for 
a  bruised  hip.  The  surgeon,  when  I  told  him  that 
the  boy  was  entitled  to  damages,  called  me  a 
blackmailer  —  and  that  was  enough.  I  forced  the 
case  to  trial. 

I  had  resigned  my  clerkship  and  gone  into  part- 
nership with  a  fine  young  fellow  whom  I  shall  call 
Charles  Gardener*  —  though  that  was  not  his 
name  —  and  this  was  to  be  our  first  case.  We 
were  opposed  by  Charles  J.  Hughes,  Jr.,  the 
ablest  corporation  lawyer  in  the  state;  and  I  was 
puzzled  to  find  the  officers  of  the  gas  company 
and  a  crowd  of  prominent  business  men  in  court 
when  the  case  was  argued  on  a  motion  to  dis- 
miss it.  'Ihe  judge  refused  the  motion,  and  for 
so  douig  — as  he  afterward  told  me  himself  — 
he  was  "cut"  in  his  Club  by  the  men  whose  pres- 
ence in  the  court  had  puzzled  me.  After  a  three 
weeks'  trial,  in  which  we  worked  night  and  day 
for  the  plaintiff  —  with  X-ray  photographs  and 
medical  testimony  and  fractured  bones  boiled  out 
over  night  in  the  medical  school  where  I  prepared 

•Thi.  i3  one  of  the  Jew  fictitious  names  used  in  the  story.    Judge  Lind- 
»ey  wuhes  It  disguised  "for  old  sdce's  Mke."  'uoge  una 


•»  THE  BEAST 

l^T!r'''*^"u'^/'°°'*  "'•'^«''' '»  ""e  •■"  our  favour 

and  the  case  had  to  be  begun  all  over  again.    The 

econd  time,  after  another  trial  of  three  weefa 

;^  J";y     hung"  again,  but  we  did  not  give  u^' 

The  word  had  gone  about  the  streets:  "Go  up 
and  see  those  two  kids  fighting  the  corporatioS 
heavyweights.  It's  more  fun  Ihan  a^cSs" 
And  we  were  confident  that  we  could  w  tawe 
knew  that  we  were  right. 

One  evening  after  dinner,  when  we  were  sitting 
n    he  dmgy  httle  back  room  on  Champa  Strm 

"bLT  ."'  ^  f."  °®^^'  ^-  M-  Stev^enson- 
Big  Steve  -politician  and  attorney  for  the 
Denver  City  Tramway  Company,  came' hou.der! 
mg  in  to  see  us  -  a  heavy-jowied,  heavy-waisted 
red-faced  bulk  of  good-humour-'looklia^'  fte 
had  just  walked  out  of  a  political  cartoon.^ "Hello 
boys,  he  said  jovially.  "How's  she  going?  Mat 
ing  a  record  for  yourselves  up  in  court  eh  ?  Mak  W 
a  record  for  yourselves.     Well!"  "^^^tng 

He  sat  down  and  threw  a  foot  up  on  the  desk 
and  smrled  at  us.  with  his  inevitable  cigarette  n 
h^s  mouth  -his  ridiculously  madequate  dgarette 

in?  K  Strf  ^  "'  ^'  ^""^"^  '•'^«  ^  fat  boy  blow 
^g    bubble^)      "Wearing    yourselves    out.    cT? 

Worl^ng  night  and  dayP    Ain't  you  getting 'abt; 


FINDING  THE  CAT  gs 

••Uh-huh.  YouwilI.eh?"  Helaughedamusedly. 
One  man  stood  out  against  you  each  time,  wasn't 
there? 

There  was. 

"Well,"  he  said,  "there  always  will  be  You 
ain't  gomg  to  get  a  verdict  in  this  case.  You 
cant.  Now  x'm  a  friend  of  you  boys,  ain't  I? 
Well,  my  advice  to  you  is  you'd  better  settle  that 
case.  Get  something  for  your  work.  Don't  be 
a  pair  of  fools.    Settle  it." 

"  Why  can't  we  get  a  verdict  ?"  we  asked 

He  w-inked  a  fat  eye.  "Jury'U  hang.  Every 
tune     I  m  here  to  tell  you  so.    Better  settle  it."* 

We  refused  to.  What  was  the  use  of  courts  if 
we  could  not  get  justice  for  this  crippled  boy? 
What  was  the  use  of  practising  law  if  we  could 
not  get  a  verdict  on  evidence  that  would  convince 
a  blind  man?     Settle  it?    Never! 

So  they  went  to  our  client  and  persuaded  the 
boy  to  give  up. 

"Big  Steve,"  attorney  for  the  tramway  com- 
pany! The  gas  company's  officers  in  court'  The 
busmess  men  in  ulting  the  judge  in  his  Club! 
1  he  defendant  s  brother  at  the  head  of  one  of 

,,,.'!""'*"  frP^»'^«'     I    began    to   "connect 
up       tne  Cat. 

_Gardener  and  I  held  a  council  of  war.    If  it 

•M«ny  of  the  conversations  reported  in  this  volume  are  riv.n  I 
memo,y  and  they  are  Uable  to  em.rs  of  memory  ZTeCflZ^ 
.  Unjn  o,  ^pression^    But  they  are  no,  liable  to  L^rt  subsl^  Thl' 
we  the  unadorned  truth,  clearly  recollected.  g  g  t 


**  THE  BEAST 

was  possible  for  these  men  to  "hang"  jurfe, 
whenever  they  chose,  there  was  need  of  a  liw  to 
inake  something  less  than  a  unanimous  decision 
by  a  jury  sufficient  to  give  a  verdict  in  civil  cases 
Colorado  needed  a  "three-fourths  jury  law  " 
Gardener   was   a   popular   voung   man.   a  good 

h^fTi'  *  "r^"'  "^  '"""'*'  ^™'«™»'  orders,  a 
hail-fe  low-w'ell-met.  and  as  interested  as  I  was 
.n  poht.cs.  He  had  been  in  the  insurance  busN 
ness  before  he  took  up  law.  and  he  had  friends 

—  as  he  had  often  spoken  of  doing 
In  the  intervals  of  the  Cmith  suit,  we  had  had  a 

killed  by  a  street  car,  had  been  unable  to  recover 
damages   from   the  tramway   company,   because 
the  company  claimed,  under  the  law.  that  her 
child  was  worthless  alive  or  dead;  and  there  was 
need  of  a  statute  permitting  such  as  she  to  recover 
damages  for  distress  and  anguish  of  mmd.     We 
had  had  another  case  in  which  a  young  factorv 
worker  had  been  injured  by  the  bursting  of  an 
emery  v.heel;  and  the  law  held  that  the  boy  was 
guilty  of    'contributory  negligence"  because  he 
had  continued  to  work  at  the  wheel  after  he  had 
found  a  flaw  in  it  -  although  he  had  had  no 
choice  except  to  work  at  it  or  leave  the  factory 
and  find  employment  elsewhere.     There  was  need 
of  a  law  giving  workmen  better  protection  in  such 
circumstances.     Why  should  not  Gardener  enter 


,i^ 


FINDING  THE  CAT  u 

the  Legislature  and  introduce  these  bills?— which 
I  WM  eager  to  draft.  Why  not.  indeed!  The 
state  needed  them;  the  people  wanted  them;  the 
courts  were  crippled  and  justice  was  balked 
because  of  the  lack  of  them.  Here  was  an 
opportunity  for  worthy  ambition  to  serve  the 
community  and  help  his  fellow-man. 

That  night,  with  all  the  high  hopes  and  gener- 
ous ideals  and  merciful  ignorance  of  youth,  we 
decided  -  without  knowing  what  we  were  about  — 
to  go  mto  the  jungle  and  attack  the  Beast! 


CHAPTER  II 

THE   CAT  PURH8 

and  .:Sit  w  vffu'n;''^"';  ''7"'"''^ 
skyed.  with  the  veryspa  kle  of  han  °'"'  • ''^'■ 
air;  and  on  the  crown  of  its  ^,1/"^^:^'  '"  '" 
tie  prospect   of  .J  p       .   '"' ^"'""8  ">« 'oman- 

raised  i  s  dLe  ^^T''    '^"  '^"»'''   Capitol 

tion  and  the^e.^eSon  If  Jpt",    X^""- 
tol.  I  confess,  was  to  me  a  Jrt    f  ■        ^'*P'" 

erected  by  the  Common"  eajth  of  C  T^T  '"""P'^ 
to  iusticp    tn  tu     . '     ,^*''»''"  °f  Colorado  to  Jaw. 

havil':  ;  o^rtp'utc  th  ^^'^■^-~^'''  '^*' 
the  oppressed  or£ope  tnTr'"',^'  °'  '»" 
of  no  nobler  work  tLn  /  u"''^  ^^'^^'^^ 

the  assembly  1.°  it  oHhlt  TZ-'^"''  '""'^^^  '» 
eternal  mountains  on  the  f.  "'^'  ''''^  '^°«« 
of  freedom  overhead      st  f""""  '"'^  "'^^  «"» 

so  much.  wit.:urshamttji.r;ir  7'r 

inexperience.  t,  ;«  *  "  T""  *"*^  his 

the  dome  of  the  Caoitol  fh  'i  "'^  "^"  ^"^^^  °° 

look  to  me  now  ^       ^*'  '"''  S^'"«"  "  another 

It  was  the  3,ear   1897.     I  was  about  twenty- 


I 


J 


THE  CAT  PURRS  „ 

eight  years  old.  and  my  partner.  Gardener  wa, 
h~e  years  younger.  He  was  more  wo  Id tw"" 
with  brTet  "h"  "'"=  '°'  "'"'^  '  '"^'^  •'^^^  bu"; 
^^usintt  d""  oTth'e  fil' •  'r  '"'  ^-  ">' 
friends  and  'o.^liZ'^-lJ^^-ZT'^  ^^^ 
.ay -and  through  his  innumerXfonn:;  on7 
here  and  there,  with  this  n.an  and  that  fraletr 
brmgmg  he  cases  that  Icept  u.  employed  £ 
1      was    a      bilver    Repubican"-  r     „    ri 

a  man  whom  we  both  admirpH       r„         r^, 

Hco  such  a  good  man  in  his  home!    And  Ws 

I        "  ;-'^''"tabIe!"    At   Christmas  time,   when  free 

k^      of  food    were   distributed   to   the  po^ 

'  tV  ^'^  T^""""-  H«  «•«'«  prominent  in  th^ 
fraternal  orders  and  used  his  political  power  to 
help  the  needy,  the  widow  and^he  orphan  He 
had  an  engagmg  manner  of  fellowship,  a  persona! 
^agnetism.  a  kindly  interest  in  aspWng  "oun  ' 
^en.  a  pleasant  appearance  -  smooth  a^d  Zk 

hked  h.m:  and  he  seemed  to  discover  an  affeftion 


*®  THE  BEAST 

attracted  some  pubHc  aVi-'""'''^  '^^'  ""'  ^'^ 
paper  notice  b/otl^rbX^with"  "t  ""^■ 
poration  heavyweiVhls"    n  .u    *     ""^  «=°'" 

against  the  Xon  th.  ?  *'"'■  '^""^  ^'^  *^'««'' 
the  factory  owS  But  .hTT7  *'°'°P''">'  ''"'^ 
us  for  the  eaTwifh  A-  J^**^.  "'''  ^"o'"'  to 
to  the  inLlf  of  t  B?"^--  P«°«'™'«d 

for  this  offico  «t  fi,„         •  '°  ''^  nominated 

proofs  (to  us)  that  hf  J    u^      one -the  sure 
^timate  se^ret^  S  fh.        ^"^  *'^™"^''  '«  '»»« 

of  the  coSL^y^thrj  roi'"""?  -°'*^^ 
rSd^tirr.^^^^^^^^^^^^ 

himself  la^S  gIIL™  ^""•*°' q"«"t«s  that  he 
well  bui,r  alwa^lTdrred  trf'^"'!?"''^' 
ambitious;  I  did  not  wond  rlh^t^S  '°' 
adm^d  him  and  made  much  oftim'^  i^^^^^ 


THE  CAT  PURRS  29 

Ifftn»?  r''^  ^'^^^"^  ""^  'o  him  with  an 

affection  rather  more  than  brotherly. 

n,  •    /^'u.,r''''"S  '°  '•'^  politicians  about  our 
projected  b.Us.     Indeed,  from  the  first,  my  i^  e  °  s[ 

dener  s.    His  des.re  to  be  in  the  Legislature  was 
due  to  a  natural  ambition  to  "get  on"  in  Se T 

wealth   and   distmction   that   come   with   power 
Such  ambitions  were,  of  course,   beyond  ml  I 

Dy  proxy,  m  Gardener's  person.     I  enjoyed    in 
he  same   way.   his  gradual  penetration  Sind 

v^lT'  '"  P°''"^«-  I  «--'  with  Wm.  that  tSe 
party  convention,  to  which  we  had  at  first  looked 
as  the  source  of  honours,  was  really  only  a  ort  of 
re  ^''-.?^  -hich  the  Boss  (eld  Ve:^L  ' 
bv  Grih"  •  *'?  ^°'  °<"»'°«tion  were  selected 
by  Graham  m  advance -in  secret  caucus  with 
his  ward  leaders,  executive  committeemen  Tnd 
such  other  "practical"  politicians  as  "BTste"" 
ZaTri^T  "°°:;!^''°"'  W'th  more  or  less  show  of 
^dependence,  did  nothing  but  ratify  his  choice. 

defecates  ^of,h   ''"""°^  ^^"^  °^  *^«  '=»'-- 
"m!?,fK      the    convention,    Gardener    said: 
WLats  the  use  of  talkmg  to  those  small  fry? 
If  we  ca.1  get  the  big  fellows,  we've  got  the  rest 
They  do  what  the  big  ones  tell  them  -  and  wS 


^  THE  BEAST 

do  anything  they  aren't  told.    You  leave  it  to 
me.      I  had  only  hoped  to  see  him  in  the  Lower 
House  but  he,  with  his  wiser  audacity,  soon  pro- 
claimed himself  a  candidate  for  the  Senate.    "  Ww 
can  get  the  big  thing  as  easy  e    the  little  one."  he 
said.       I  m  going  to  tell  Graham  it's  the  Senate 
or  nothmg  for  me."     And   he  got  his  promise. 
And  when  we  knew,  at  last,  that  his  name  was 
rea%  on  "the  slate"  of  candidates  to  be  presented 
to  the  convention,  we  were  ready  to  throw  up  our 
hats  and  cheer  tor  ourselves  -  and  for  the  Boss. 
Ihe  convention  met  in  September.  1898.    There 
had  been  a  fusion  qf  Silver  Republicans.  Demo- 
crats, and  Populists,  that  year,  and  the  political 
S'.         v.^''"    apportioned    out    among    the 
faithful  machme-men  of  these  parties.     Gardener 
was  nominated  by  "Big  Steve."  in  a  eulogistic 
speech  tha    was  part  of  the  farce;  and  the  con- 
vention ratified  the  nomination  with  the  unanimity 
of  a  stage  mob.     We  knew  that  his  election  was 
as  sure  as  sunrise   and  I  set  to  work  looking  up 
models  for  my  bills  with  all  the  enthusiasm  of  the 
iirst  reformer. 

Meanwhile  there  was  the  question  of  the  cam- 
paign and  of  the  campaign  expenses.  Gardener 
had  been  assessed  $500  by  the  committee  as  his 
share  of  the  legitimate  costs  of  the  election,  and 
Boss  Graham  generously  oflFered  to  g,t  the  money 
for  him  "from  friends."  We  were  rather  inclmed 
to  let  Graham  do  so.  feeling  a  certain  delicacy 


THE  CAT  PURRS  g, 

about  refusing  his  generosity  and  bebg  aware 

wi  not  tT  "T  ""'  -"-naires.  But  Graham 
was  not  the  only  one  who  made  the  offer-  for 
example,  Ed.  Chase,  since  head  of  the  SeS 
syndicate  .n  Denver,  made  similar  proposals  of 
kindly  a.d;  and  we  decided,  at  last.  t^hatCrhaps 
t  would  be  well  to  be  quite  independent'^  oir 
law  practice  was  improving.  Doubtless,  it  wol 
continue  to  improve  now  that  we  were  "in  rTX'- 
with  the  political  powers.  We  put  up  $250  fa  fa 
and  paid  the  assessment.  ^  ^ 

The  usual  business  of  political  r.  'lies,  mass- 
meetmgs  and  campaign  speeches  followed  in  du" 
course    and   m   November.   1898.  Gardened  was 

iTt."  f '*'  ^'"'"''  °°  the  fusion  ticket     I 
had  been  busy  with  my  "three-fourths  jury"  bill 
studying  the  constitution  of  the  State  of  Colorado 
comparmg  it  with  those  of  the  other  states    ^ri 
making  myself  certain  that  such  a  la"  as  t'  pTo 
posed   was   possible.     Unlike  most   of  the   sJIL 
constitutions    Colorado's   preserved  invidate  1 
right  of  juiy  trial  m  criminal  cases  only,  and  there^ 
fore   It  seemed   to   me  that  the  Legi  lature  had 
plenary  power  to  regulate  it  in  civil  suits.   Ttound 
hat  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  state  had  so  dedded 
m  two  cases,  and  I  felt  veiy  properly  elated    there 
seemed  to  be  nothing  to  prevenVus  having  a  llw 
hat  should  make  "hung"  Juries  practical l/i^po^T 
sible  in  Colorado  and  relieve  the  rn,.r/=     t 
abuse  that  thwarted  justice  in  scot  orc^s     Z 


^*  THE  BEAST 

the  same  time  I  prepared  a  bill  allowing  parents 

^cZZ  ?r'^"  '"'  "'^^'^^  °^  mind-Ten 

f m,L  K  •  ^^  *'  ''Wy  *«  a  man  who  has 

found  h.s  proper  work  and  knows  that  it  Ts  f^ 

bg  wor?d  "^^*^'P'--  *«  -veil  to  an  adiT 

lea'rn-that'rhr'i:'^^ r**"*  '  ^^  --  '<> 

wHoii,t:tL:fp\^ntt:-trk^-a^^^^^^ 

ment.  that  most  of  the  bills  passed  wet  HZZ 
wrth  appropriations  and  such  necessary  deUils 
of  administration,  and  that  only  twenty  or  thirtv 


THE  CAT  PURRS  33 

fourths  iuiy"  bill.    Since  Graham  seemed  to  doubt 
ts  constrtutionality,  I  went  to  the  Attorney  Genera 

-  whom  I  convmced.  I  came  back  with  the 
^s^tant  s  dec.s.on  that  the  Legislature  had  power 
to  pass  such  a  law.  and  Gardener  promptly  tetr^ 
duced  It  m  the  Senate.  ^  ^ 

It  proved  at  once  mildly  unpopular,  and  after 
a  prehmmary  debate,  in  which  Ihe  senators  rather 
laughed  at  .t  as  visionary  and  unconstitutional,! 
was   referred   to  the  Attorney   General   for   h  s 
ZTh-     ^7f.^^'-"fidently.     Toouramaz! 
ment  he  reported  it  unconstitutional,  and  the  very 
assistant  who  had  given  me  a  favourabt  opS 
before,  now  conducted  the  case  against  it.    Noth" 
mg  daunted.  Gardener  fought  to  get  it  refe^d 
to  the  Supreme  Court,  under  the  law;  and  the 
Senate  sent  .t  there.    I  got  up  an  elabo;ate  br Lf! 
had   t  printed  at  our  expense,  and  spent  a  day  in 
arguing  .t  before  the  Supreme  Court  judges.    Th^J 
held    hat  the  Court  had  already  twice'^found  the 

matters,   and    Gardener   brought    the   bill    back 

report  from  the  Judiciary  Committee 

By    this    time,    Boss    Graham    was    seriously 
alarmed.    He  had  warned  Gardener  thatTheblj 

hT  «S^.'°t''"  ^"'^  '°  "^-  -'^^  »>«  -"^ 

lus      friends.       It    was    particularly    distastef,,! 
•t  seemed,  to  the  Denver  City  Tramway  CompSJ.' 


H 

: 


'*  THE  BEAST 

fh"e  m1  ^''^  P™'°'->  •>«  -id.  that  if  we  dropped 

got  at  leaat  four  thousand  dollars'  worth  of  u7 
gallon  a  year  to  handle.     To  both  P-rT  J 

myself,  flushed  with  succel  a^d  ro^seH 'th' 
ba«Ie  this  offer  seeded  an  an,using  cou  ess  on' 
of  defeat  on  the  part  of  the  oppositfon;  and  we 
went  ahead  more  gaily  than  ever 

We  were  enjoying  ourselves.  If  we  had  fw.™ 
a  pa.r  of  ehums  in  college,  we  could  Z  havet" 
a  better  t.me.  Whenever  I  could  get  away  from 
my  court  cases  and  my  office  work  I  Z^l  T 
^  watch  the  fight  in  L  Sennas  1^/1"^ 
Freshman   hurrying  from  his  studies   to     ee  his 

ma  football  game.     The  whole  atmosphere  S 
the  Capitol  -  w.th  its  corridors  of  coloured  mrWe 
Its  vistas  of  arch  and  pillar,  its  burnished  metal 
balustrades,  its  great  staircases  -  all  its  maTstv 
of  nch  grandeur  and  solidity  of  power  -Xctd 
me  w.th  an  mcreased  respect  for  the  funcSSs^ 
government  that  were  discharged  there  and  fo, 
the  men  who  had  them  to  discharge.     I  felt  the 
reflection  of  that  importance  beaming  upon  myseH 
when  I  was  introduced  as  "Senator  gZm 
law  partner,  sir";  and  I  accepted  the  bows  aL 
greetings  of  lobbyists  and  legislators  with ^,  tie 
pleasure  m  the  world. 

When  Gardener  got  our  bill  up  for  its  final 
readmg  m  the  Senate,  I  was  there  to  watch.  «,d 


Ml 


,  THE  CAT  PURRS  „ 

li  tickled  me  to  the  heart  to  see  him      it 
fine  figure  of  an  orator   the  hanH?        '  """^'  " 
the  Senate;  and  he  wa    tt  afST  r  ""\'^ 
voice  and  look  ao   in^^      "■  '°  '*'®e  his 

as  his  words  He  haT  "'  ?^  ^^'^™'"«d 
understand  that  Sy  tt  5^  '''  T'''""  '« 
would  have  him  as  an  nh  r  7^"""^  ^''  ^'» 
every  other  meluri;  and  th^t  T^'"^"'  °" 
realized  that  it  would  liwisllo  tT  7"'^""^ 
way.  The  bill  was  palsT  BufifT  ^'^ '"'^ 
through  the  Lower  Ho^e  ton  J  ■''*'^  '**  «» 
there,  to  be  taken  SrHf  bv  Sf  "  ""  ^^"' 
with  the  tongue  in  the  cheek  n^^dolr^"^"'^  ^ 

I  met  Boss  Graham  in  hU  .  ;• 

Ben."  he  greeted  te  "mItWh'"-  "''^"°' 
that  partner  of  yours?" 7 1  '^.'""'ter  with 
worried.     "Come  "nhL"  ^"«'^?'^'-  he   looked 

tohaveatalk^lIhy^ou^Vred^m'-  7'  ''''^ 
side  room  and  shut'the  doof  ''^2  W,  V"  » 
he  said.     "Did  von  K^,„  "*'''  here," 

a  boat  you'lfbe  in  with  ^h'?'  ''u^  '°  '^'"'^  ^hat 
fo  get/if  you  e'r  wt  tfi'd'  ^""'^  ''^-^ 
h.  a  jury  suitP  Now  th^;  tell  "1  T'^'"''''''' 
tramway  offices"  — th."ffi  '^''  '"f*  down  at  the 

Tramwi;  Company  -  "tEr/ '''  ''.^"^^'  ^'V 
a  lot  more  legal  help  ^W?^  «*  ^^'^g  to  need 
that  they'll  appoint  vou  h  ^^"'^  P'^^P^'^t 

But  they  can't  erentT^^'  *'"''*°'  «^°"n«el. 

hright  bis  ;i:rs  ?th':yr  'thr  ^"^  ^°" 

t^e..    Y-^ow  that  all  fhtmVn'^^t^tt 


n  '  II 


^^  THE  BEAST 

law  is  in  coT^oration  business.    I  don't  see  what 
you  re  i.^.iting  for." 

I  explained,  as  well  as  I  could,  that  we  were 
figh  .ng  for  the  bill  because  we  thought  it  w« 
nght  -  that  it  was  needed.     He  did  nf  t  s^mT 

n^l  •>rtLa^• '^"^  '"^'  '•''^  ^"''  ^'  ''^'^  -- 

to  n^^'I'.'J  ^"u^'^'  """^'^^  "'^'^^  "P  o"r  minds 
to  put  , I  through.    And  we're  going  to  try." 
You  II  fuid  you  re  making  a  mistake,  boy,"  he 

wa^edme^-You'llfindyou'remakingamisL^" 
We  laughed  over  ,t  together  -  Gardener  and  I. 
It  was  another  proof  to  us  that  we  had  our  oppon- 
ents on  their  knees.  We  thought  we  underXod 
Grahams  position  m  the  matter;  he  had  made 

friendly  with  Mr   William  G.  Evans -the  great 

Bill     Evans -head  of  the  tramway  company 

and  an  acknowledged  power  in  politics.    And  il 

could  to  mduce  us  to  spare  his  friends.     That 
was  all  very  well,  but  we  had  made  no  pledges- 

tTeTublS'".""  °"'^^"°"^  '"  «°^  -'-5 
the    publc    whom    we    served.     Gardener    was 

making  himself  felt   and  he  intended  to  contiTu" 

to   make   himself   felt.    He   did   not   intend   to 

stultify  himself,  even  for  Graham's  good  "fSs  '' 

I,  of  course,  went  along  with  him.  rejoicing.         ' 

He  had  another  bill  in  hand  (House  Bill  235) 

to  raise  the  tax  on  large  foreign  insurance  com 


I 


THE  CAT  PURBS 

•".for  'ooney;7Xl':Tt:i^''^^^- 
'o  be  just,  and  it  would  add  «f  .     T^  «^°n^«led 
revenue  to  the  public  coffers      r'^J  *'""'''«»  ^ 
't   welJ   in   the  Senate  7n^"     ^H"^'''^' ^'^^dled 

-directly  offered  a  br'b^oTtloor!?   "^   "^™ 
got  it  passed  and  reti.rj  f  .'    ?  '"  "^'"P  ''-he 

He  had  two  X-  bX        '°  ">«  ^^-^  House. 

mind"  provision  and  th!.""""^""  "anguish  of 

the  telephone  c^^^^  ^^^^  «  ^ii,  regulating 

move  them  out  of  cSmrtiee     Th  """  ""•  "^'«  '« 
Silent  but  solid  *  opposition  waa 

w/hXTaSL'o";ir,fr:'thV^  ^"'«  *^«» 

on  final  passage -S  f^ ''**  """"^  calendar 

their  tu„.rrnsidSatlV'Th?^  ^^^  ^'^^ 
to  the  top  ver,.  soon  but  ^  -  ^""^  •""  *''™« 
next  da/it  wL  on  the  Li  T.'"^  ''^"''  ""<* 
happened  more  than  onceTnV^  '^'-  '^''^ 
appeared    fiom    thp    „=i     j  *"'*^   '*   <Jis- 

Clerk  of  the  C3fwh:n  rim  'hT'^"-  '^'^« 
t-.  said  that  it  wa.  an  tSt  ''"^Y-- 
em,r-and  put  it  back  at  the   St'*- 

Ubyist  wLt;/ Jemb:;  of:  ;^r  1"*^'  '^ 

o    which   I    belonged    came   t         *'"*'  '^'^^^ 

fraternal  greeting  ami  a  t?        ^   '"^    ^"^    the 

"Lindse/he  si-d    "rh^r""^  '^"""^  -  Wis. 


is  a  legal  fee  for 


an 


:    f 

1     ! 


I,  1' 


88  THE  BEAST 

argument  we  want  you  to  make  before  the  com- 
mittee, as  a  lawyer,  against  that  insurance  bill. 
It's  perfectly  legitimate.  We  don't  want  you  to 
do  anything  except  m  a  legal  way.  You  know, 
~ur  other  lawyer  has  made  an  able  argument, 
showing  how  the  extra  tax  will  come  out  of  the 
people  in  increased  premiums"  —  and  so  on.  I 
refused  the  money  and  continued  trying  to  push 
along  the  bill.  In  a  few  days  he  came  back  to 
me,  with  a  grin.  "Too  bad  you  didn't  take  that 
money,"  he  said.  "  There's  lots  of  it  going  roimd. 
But  the  joke  of  it  is,  I  got  the  whole  thing  fixed  up 
for  $850.  Watch  Cannon."  I  watched  Cannon 
—  Wilbur  F.  Cannon,  a  member  of  the  House 
and  a  "floor  leader"  there.  He  had  already 
voted  in  favour  of  the  bill.  But  —  to  anticipate 
somewhat  the  sequence  of  events  —  I  saw  Wilbur 
F.  Cannon,  in  the  confusion  and  excitement  of 
the  closing  moments  of  the  session,  rush  d-^wn  the 
aisle  toward  the  Spteaker's  chair  and  make  Jiotion 
concerning  the  insurance  bill  —  to  whf  l  effect  I 
could  not  hear.  The  motion  was  put,  in  the  midst 
of  the  uproar,  and  declared  carried;  and  the  bill 
was  killed.  It  was  killed  so  neatly  that  there  is 
to-day  no  record  of  its  decease  in  the  o£5cial 
account  of  the  proceedings  of  the  House !  Expert 
treason,  b'  'i  and  skilful!  '■• 

Meanwhile,  I  had  been  standing  by  our  jury 
bill.    It  went  up  and  it  went  down  on  the  calendar, 

*Wilbui  P  Cannon  is  now  Pun  Food  Commiaaioner  in  Colondo. 


39 


THE  CAT  PURRS 

and  at  last  when  it  arrived  at  a  hearing  it  waa 
referred  back  to  the  Judiciary  Committee  with 
two  other  anti-corporation  bills.  The  session 
was  drawing  toward  the  day  provided  by  the 
constitution  for  its  closing,  and  we  could  no  longer 
doubt  that  we  were  being  juggled  out  of  our  last 
chance  by  the  Clerk  and  the  Speaker  —  who  was 
Mr.  William  G.  Smith,  since  known  as  "Tramwav 
Bill."*  ' 

"All  right,"  Gardener  said.  "Not  one  of 
Speaker  Smith's  House  bills  will  get  through  the 
Senate  until  he  lets  our  jury  bill  get  to  a  vote." 
He  told  Speaker  Smith  what  he  intended  to  do. 
and  next  day  he  began  to  do  it. 

That  afternoon,  tired  out,  I  was  resting,  during 
a  recess  of  the  House,  in  a  chair  that  stood  in  a 
shadowed  comer,  when  the  Speaker  hurried  by 
heavily,  evidently  unaware  of  me,  and  rang  a 
telephone.    I  heard  him  mention  the  name  of  "  Mr. 
Evans,"  in  a  low,  husky  voice.    I  heard,  sleepily! 
not  consciously  listening;  and  I  did  not  at  first  con- 
nect "Mr.  Evans"  with  William  G.  Evans  of  the 
tramway  company.     But  a  little  later  I  heard  the 
Speaker   say:  "Well,    unless    Gardener    can    be 
pulled  off,  we'll  have  to  let   that  'three-fourths' 
bill  out.    He's  raising  hell  with  a  lot  of  our  meas- 
ures over  in  the  Senate.     .     .     .     What  ?     .     .     . 
Yes.     .     .     .     Well,  get  at  it  pretty  quick." 
_Those  hoarse,  significant  words  wakened  me 

.  •Smith  ia  now  Ux  ageat  in  the  tramway  officea. 


!  ''^ 


40  THE  BEAST 

like  the  thrill  of  an  electric  shock  —  wakened  me 
to  an  understanding  of  the  strength  of  the  "special 
interests"  that  wew  opposed  to  us  —  and  wakened 
in  me,  too,  the  anger  of  a  determination  to  fight 
to  a  finish.  The  Powers  that  had  "fixed"  our 
juries,  were  now  fixing  the  Legi-  .ture.  They  hau 
laughed  at  us  in  the  courts;  they  were  going  to 
laugh  at  us  in  the  r)if)itol! 

Speaker  Smith  came  lumbering  out.  He  %vas 
a  heavily  built  man,  with  a  big  jaw.  And  when 
he  saw  me  there,  confronting  him,  his  face  changed 
from  i  look  of  displeased  surprise  to  one  of  angry 
contempt  —  lowering  his  head  like  a  bull  —  as  if 

le  were  saying  to  himself:      "  What!    That  d 

little  devil!  I'll  bet  he  heard  me!"  But  he  did 
not  speak.  And  neither  did  I.  He  went  off 
about  wbatever  business  he  had  in  hand,  and  I 
caught  up  my  hat  and  hastened  to  Gardener  to 
tell  him  what  I  had  heard. 

When  the  House  met  again,  in  committee  of 
the  whole,  the  Speaker,  of  course,  was  not  in  the 
Chair,  and  Gardener  found  him  in  the  lobby. 
Gardener  had  agreed  with  me  to  say  nothing  of 
the  telephone  conversation,  but  he  threatened 
Smith  that  unless  our  jury  bill  was  "reported  out" 
by  the  Judiciary  Committee  and  allowed  to  come 
to  a  vote,  he  would  oppose  every  House  bill  in 
the  Senate  and  talk  the  session  to  death.  Smith 
fumed  and  blustered,  but  Gardener,  with  the 
blood  in  his  face,  out-blustered  and  out-fumed 


THE  CAT  PURRS  4, 

him  The  Speaker,  later  in  the  day,  vented  soino 
of  h.s  spleen  by  publicly  threatening  to  ejec  7 
from  the  floor  of  the  Hou«e  as  a  bbbyir  £  , 
he  had  to  allow  the  bill  to  come  up.  and  it  was 
finally  pass«l  with  very  little  op^oSn^tll 
rea  ons  wh.oh  I  was  aftenvard  to  understand. 

It  had  yet  to  be  signe,!  by  the  Speaker;  and  it 
U  CO  ^  "  Tf"'  '•^'"••^  "''^  '^'"-  °^' he  se  sbn  o 
some  anti-corporation  bills  were  going  to  be 
lost  by  the  Chief  Clerk,  so  that  tlfey  might  n^t 
be  signed;  and  I  kept  my  eye  on  him"^,  He \yal 
a    fat-faced,    stupid-looking.    flabbv    creature - 

cJ  ".T'  ?."•  ''''^'^"^""  -  -'>°  'lid  not  appear 
capable  of  domg  anything  veiy  daring.     Tsaw 

?or  it  ""  ^f  r"  f  ''^«''-  """ong  those  waiting 
for  the  Speakers  signature;  and  -  while  the 
House  was  busy  - 1  withdrew  it  from  the  pHe 
and  placed  .t  to  one  side,  conspicuously,  so  thai 
I  could  see  it  froK;  a  distance 

When  the  iLne  came  for  signing  -  sure  enough! 
-the  Clerk  was  missing,  and  some  bills  wie 
missmg  with  him.  The  House  was  crowded- 
floor  and  galleries  -  and  the  whole  place  went 

wtch  br°"  "'  ""'^^     "'"'""'y  ^''^''^  '«  know 
which  bills  w-ere  gone;  every  member  who  had  an 

anti-corporation  bill  thought  it  was  hi^  that  haj 

been  stolen;  and  they  all  together  broke  out  into 

denunciation,  of  the  Speaker,  the  Clerk  and  every. 


'I 


42 


THE  BEAST 


•I 

I 
1 

■  '  1 


n  i  ti  '! 


body  else  whom  they  thought  concerned  in  the 
outrage.  One  man  jumped  up  on  his  chair  and 
tried  to  dominate  the  pandemonium,  shouting 
and  waving  his  hands.  The  galleries  went  wild 
with  noisy  excitement.  Men  threatened  each 
other  with  violence  on  the  floor  of  the  House, 
cursing  and  shaking  their  fists.  Others  rushed 
here  and  there  trying  to  find  some  trace  of  the 
Clerk.  The  Speaker,  breathless  from  calling  for 
order  and  pounding  with  his  gavel,  had  to  sit 
down  and  let  them  rage. 

At  last,  from  my  place  by  the  wall,  on  the  out- 
skirts of  the  hubbub,  I  saw  the  Clerk  dragged 
down  the  aisle  by  the  collar,  bleeding,  with  a 
blackened  eye,  apparently  half  drunk  and  evi- 
dently frightened  into  an  abject  terror.  He  had 
stolen  a  bill  introduced  by  Senator  Bucklin,  pro- 
viding that  cities  could  own  their  own  water  works 
and  gas  works;  but  the  Senator's  wife  had  been 
watching  him;  she  had  followed  him  to  the  base- 
ment and  stopped  him  as  he  tried  to  escape  to  the 
street;  and  it  was  the  Senator  now  who  had  him 
by  the  neck. 

They  thrust  him  back  into  his  chair,  got  the 
confusion  quieted,  and  with  muttered  threats  of 
the  penitentiary  for  him  and  everybody  concerned 
in  the  affair,  they  got  back  to  business  again  with 
the  desperate  haste  of  men  working  against  time. 
And  our  jury  bill  was  signed! 

It  was  signed;  and  wi  had  won!     (At  least  we 


THE  CAT  PURRS  43 

glare  of  the  session's  close,  into  an  April  midnight 
that  was  as  wide  as  all  eternity  and  as  quiet      I 
seemed  to  me  that  the  stars/even  in  Sorado 
had  never  been   brighter;  they  sparkled   in   th' 

A  cool  breeze  drew  down  from  the  mountains  as 
peace  ully  as  the  breath  in  sleep.     It  was  a  ni 
to  make  a  man  take  off  his  hat  and  breathe  ou 
his  last  vexation  in  a  sigh  "reatue  out 

We  had  won      What  did  it  matter  that  the  Boss 
the  Speaker,  the  Clerk  and  so  many  more  of  fhese 

ishness?    That   spring  night   seemed   to  answer 

a  big  above  <Am  as  th.  heavens  that  arched  so 
high  above  the  puny  dome-light  of  the  CapUoT 
Had  not  even  we.  two  "boys "-as  fl,.„  i' 

tTk-rthV"^'  'z'-'-'  '^^-  -^  -^e  t  - 

^ke  up  he  pen  and  sign  it?  If  we  had  done  so 
much  without  even  a  whisper  from  the  peop l 
and  scarcely  a  line  from  the  public  press  lo  S 
and  back  us  what  would  the  future  nTdowhn 
we  ound  the  help  that  an  aroused  community 
would  surely  give  us?  Hope?  The  whTSS 
was  hushed  and  peaceful  with  hope.  The  ^frv 
houses  that  I  passed  -  walking  home  up  the  treZ 
hned  streets  -  seemed  to  me  in  some  way  so  q2 


I  !' 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  CAT  KEEPS  ON  PUHRINQ 

T^n^v"'  •'^^"°"'««'  ^««  that   we  had  won 

taken  to  £"1'  ?^'"'"°"'  •'"'^  '^^  ""^  «'«>° 

taken  to  the  Supreme  Court,  on  an  appeal  from  a 

damage  su.t.  and  the  judges  declare^d^  i7  unci! 

stitutional.   without  any   blushing  apollies   for 

a^d  Garrltn?-!  "rS  l^*"" ^  --'''- 
iaure.  meanwhile.  w^.^l^Ld^^'^^LrS 
th^^  me.denu    of    the    session    and    eount'^t^' 

no?irS"''"l^f  ^"^  """  ^"d  knock,  scarcely 
noticed  m  the  fury  and  heat  of  the  fight  but  n^w 
sorely  painful.  Boss  Graham  had  gten  hL  to 
imderstand,  more  or  less  plainly,  that  ff  he  infeTded 
to  continue  h.s  career  in  politics  as  he  had  beg.^  It 
^need  not  look  for  any  further  support  froTthe 
Repubhcan  machine  in  Denver.    Elections  cost 

we^a^b  e  to"";"  ""'^  *°  --«  ^'^  those  X 
were  able  to  subscribe  it;  and  the  Republican 
machine  could  not  afford  to  oflFend  such  libeiS 
subscribers  as  Mr.  Evans  of  the  tramway  com 
pany,  Mr.  Field  of  the  telephone  company. X. 

AA 


THE  CAT  KEEPS  ON  PURRING      45 
Cheesman  of  thp  wot  *" 

».«5«-  «.d  u,e  ^r;,Tb?.t°p^„:;:,.'""»«<» 

and  the  more  Garde„r/ 1^  l"^""  *" '^"'"«tum. 
to  me  about  It  the  Ze  H  T^^*  °'  '^  '^"'^  t«'ked 
He  had  one  mot  Term  t''^'^^'^  ^«  became. 
-andthenwhatP  Whvtll'"'''","'  '^"  S^"*** 
;he  end  of  his  poh'ti  Ke^ 'T  ^''""'="°"  " 
*o  appeal  from^he  BosHo  thi  ""^  ^  "'"'"^^ 
those  days  as  to  t.,r„  f  ^  convention,  in 

his  shad';     Idt  ^;7„«,--  to  ask  aid  f^m 

assistance  from  the  pubj!  tt  ^''^'''  '^^  "^^ 
to  serve?  We  mSt  ««  ..  T  ""^  ""^  ^^^  tried 
the  street.  fro:2decTsi::?rr'^'  ""*  '"'^ 
and  called  to  the  passers^  t„  P'"""  ^""rt. 

the  rulings  of  the  juXT  Th  '  ^  ^^^  '«^^'^« 
over  their  political  ^rs  To  thT^''''''>^^«^ 
the  Boss  as  surelv  «?  tK     \   !  convention  and 

iudic.aHunctirt'otttTrts'^'^  ^^'^^"'^'^  t^eir 

M^orss -tifn  ix;  .?Ct  "- 

fun  of  it--^t  ffr%x  P-l^f /-  '^^ 
reason -but  fight!  We  hado^.r,^'''  ^°'  '^''^ 
support  us.  We  were  nnt  A  I  '""^  P'"'^"<^«  to 
for  our  living.  CcouTd'T'T'  "P°"  P°'"'« 
and  keep  th'e  jo'^f^lS  --"  *'"'  '^'^^''^ 
recreation  for  o^r  after^ol        '  "^  '  '"''  °' 


ii 


*^  THE  BEAST 

Gardener  shook  his  head  over  it.  and  we  went 

abuse  of  the  company.  printed 

linSr  *"  *  """'ion  i"  which  I  did  not  re&h 
find„j„pe,.. Don't  wor,,"  G,rf,.„  ^f 

.hTtlp.ir.  '■;^r'r'-"^"e  ^  ■""i  "p 

ndirZ"''        ^°'-    '  P""**"!,  "thevNl  prei^ 
"  i     .^l'    ''  *«""'  "■"    "Don't  nn,  "  he 

-  .v.:°L™r„Ttj^'7;""*-"  ^^ 

being  .ctnp  Puhhci/ Jt!p.^t:rco"^;»^>; 

With  the  very  corporation  that  we  had  been  attack 
j^g  but  we  we.,  actually  being  com^HeTto  "^fii 
by  the  jury  fixmg  for  which  we  had  assailedTh. 

Tr'T  ^  ^°"''»  "°'  ""-ke  up  my  lind 
whether  this  was  accidental  or  malido^^  ^d  5 
went  through  with  the  case.  It  endedT'al'J 
W-    We  received  $500  from  the  tramway  com! 


I  objected  to  Graham  that  Hfinn 
-that  we  did  not  chTree  Lon  f ''"'  *°°  '"'"''» 
"But."  he  said    with  hf  ^"^  '"*=''  "^a^es. 

Helped  them  deLTciirr  '""'^l  "^°"'^« 
have  taken  a  lot  of  the  til  T^  T  "**'*  '^°"W 
counsel  to  defend"  lZ,T^^ '^'^^^'^'^'^g 
though  I  knewTtw.,  i  !  P*^*^  ''^^  e^^planation! 
for  it'was  thei;Lj  ;l:,\7'-^*r  at  «"  - 
the  suit.     But  our  ,-,  rv^  "^^  "^^^  ^^d  won 

the  Supreme  Court  Z  an"  ""'  *^  ^  *^^*^^  »>«'°«* 
suit;  and  I  eased  mV    ^°  ^PP^*'  f™™  a  damage 

that'if  the  Co'rt  fZ,;tr ',r  '^  '^"'"^  ^-''a- 
as  he  seemed  to  ^p^ett  wouiT-T'T^-'A'  - 
dener  intended  to  propose   af  S  '""°'"  *^"- 

constitutional  ameu'dirpel^JL";!--'-.  * 
of  our  law  permittmg  the  passage 

B.  pooh-poohed  „/;t:uh."i""i::;r' '",•■'■ 

fools  enough  to  nav  7i«  „,        xt  they're 

-.«h,-.  h/„^.x^..sr.,ri.«'7j : -h™,. 

more  fools  they'    If  w^V^       •       '°'"'""t-    The 

P«,Pl..  we've  ^.SKTo^I, 'IS.  ""1 
We've  got  to  take  every  cent  w^  "^^^ 

be   foolish.    You're   n^t  ^ L^^^ed"  t    '''"''* 

Tnotht^"  *'•'  '"^"-^  -  ""'"'o  -■•   ""' 

-^i^lSr.  ^ndrS  '"d  '^  ""°'^- 
famous  "Jim"  Marshal?  «       S^"'^^"*  ^^^  the 

«d,heve,„„.rithrszc:::s 


48 


THE  BEAST 


■f^ 


I' I 


of  conspiring  with  a  police  captab  to  rob  an 
express  train  on  the  Denver  and  Rio  Grande 
Kailroad.  In  this  case  he  was  involved  in  a  dis- 
pute about  the  lease  of  a  gambling  house;  and 
though  the  city  at  the  time,  was  supposed  to  be 
shut  down  t^hf  against  all  gambling.  Marshall 
assured  me  that  this  was  only  a  political  ruse  to 
deceive  the  "goody-goodies."  It  was  "on  the 
cards  to  open  up  again  very  soon,  and  he  wanted 
tHe  liouse  m  readiness. 

I  learned  to  like  Marshall.  He  was  a  good- 
hearted,  fearless  man;  and  in  the  hands  of  any 
other  system  but  that  under  which  we  lived,  he 
migh  have  been  an  invaluable  man  to  the  com- 
munity. We  became  the  best  of  friends.  I 
learned  from  him  all  I  wished  to  know  of  the  con- 
nection between  the  Beast,  politics  and  the  gam- 
blers; and  what  I  learned  made  clear  to  me  the 
real  meaning  of  the  struggle  that  I  had  seen 

"Bro!^  i   .."'t  J^°"'^  B°*«l   of  Denver  and 
Bloody  Bridles"  Waite. 

We  won  Marshall's  case  for  him;  and  without 
waitmg  for  his  bill,  he  sent  us  a  fee  of  $1,000. 
Meanwhile,  other  corporation  cases  had  been  com- 

^ir  7  *?  ^'"^'°«  '"Se  fees.  Gardener  was 
jobilant.  I  became  more  and  more  uneasy. 
These  people  were  not  paying  us -as  I  began 
to  see  -  they  were  trying  to  buy  us.  They  were 
usmg  on  us  a  system  which  they  must  have  used 
on  hundreds  of  young  men  in  Denver,  before  and 


I 


THE  CAT  KEEPS  ON  PURRING      49 

-unity  to'obtTthe"'  Tht       "    ''^    ^°'°- 
^uy  us.   and   they   w^e  sLoLrnr  G^7  '" 

(he  was?ewrrrrdri';2-°'  '"  '•"'^'•'- 
of  an  evening    on  th.    7  T       "^  "P  ^''^^  <^«'^. 

we  happened!  Ivt:n1S7nd"  1'"^^^'  ^'"^ 
moment  together  companionable 

Js  easy  enough  f«  !^     I  ^^  understood.     R 

it  is  better  to  undeSn    ^  ff '^^'"ent-    But 

against,to  apprTct^tt  o:e"hlt^    d/f' 
had  against  him  in  th^    .   "    ,'^°«m"'g  odds  he 

to  save  for  th^men  1^^^^?   '.'°uP''^  ^^'  ""^ 
'^-^i-asted,  nr:;trif  vtr^  --•• 

iLL"irryo;ftr£'^^f--"'« 

Gardener.    In  our  Ion!  ^""'^  '""^'^  '^as  in 

attached  me  to  him  bv^rP*T""^'''P'  ^'  ^ad 

-hasfor.haris^:::--n:ShV^- 


*"  THE  BEAST 

to  enjoy  and  to  havA?7      f  P"'""^"'  '«  •>«  able 
that  career  and  r.\      ^^  ^  ""^"^  '^«  ^™''''  <>* 
Are  .heser^^aiLVaTe^kHn^ 
the  very  qualities  that  make  for T        ,  T  """^ 
a  strong  man  in  an  Ton    /  usefulness  of 

^i^^?^;t:?t^^^^"--" 

Look  at  Graha^  They  "  ;;  "''"  ^^^here. 
"•  And  he  has  thes^^Z^Z""^'^  ''""^ 
to  get  another  election  L.i.-  '  "*"  ^  ™  e^er 
courts.  Those  SZ  ItX'"^',  ''"''''  ''^  ">« 
Graham,  the  JneTs  iL  7  ^'^'''  ''^^°"g'> 
juries?     You  HWf  ■^""'^  *'  '^e  hunij 

those  juvil  "do  ;ours"  ''^^  .'r^ '°  *«' 

wait  around  up^ere  T^  '^'T  "'^  ^"''^  ^^° 
kBow  who's  \.ho  bthi!^  ^°V°  ^"'y  ^'  •• 
stand  in  with  S  po  Jrt     tT'  .  ^'^l  "''"' 

House  or  tic'^Tol-t^-^--^^^^^^ 


.   THE  CAT  KEEPS  ON  PURRTMr 
fgauist  the  whole  caniP      a   J      '^""'^G      5, 
,  or?    For  'the  ^f;"^"   ^L'  J'""  '^'>  -«  ^o  U 

1  hell  with  them.  ^A  good  h^'jT  P«'P'«''    To 

i  game  themselves,     k^j  wo„.°U^°  "^  '^  '*»•' 

l"m  on  u,  .^j^  cur  as  ^P  "''  They'll 
r'd-  And  the  other  ha?f  r"'^'^^««"'he 
doesn't  want  to  know     Th  "^  ^^^  ""d 

"«  'f  «e  told  them,  n  J5  ^.''°"'*^''''  ''^'-eve 
^"j"  i3  to  make  a  livW  L  ?     '"''•    ^"  ">ey 

fi;andXtSlr.^etmonVand^g:f 
these  fellows  whe;e  tZ  aT  "j  "f^ '^^.  «hfw 
a  while.     We  can't  do  Inwt      u'  P'*^  'he  game 

y/-     They'll  simp,;:Cfu?    r'*'"'''^«''-J^ 
doors."  '^■^  '^'^"'^'^  us  out  and  lock  the 

'hat  we  should  iVhte  t^l^  T[  ''^  ^^^  h^^ 
haps  things  would  turn  ou  L»    \u  ^"^'  'hat  per- 
I  was  impractical,  as  GaTden    "  "l""  '''^^  ^^'^ed. 
«oney  matters.     I  bad  if ^T/^'^'  Particularly  b 
f  «y«  as  a  grasping  lUttt;:  ''^  °"'  ^  ""^  ^ounge^ 
'he  very  necessarifs  onitTl:,  t'""'"*  '"^^^'f  for 
P«uuy  I  could  get      T  S  •    "^  '"'*"'''"«  "P  every 
-*J  estate  durtg  tl  De^r  ^^ -vbgs  b 
'hen   vai«„  dec^  t^^t*'  '«"d  boom;  and 
-fter  an  ,gony  of^.'td      "   f^^'P'^'  and 

rr,ti  ^'•'^ '  ^Xe7' itr°"' .'  ^°^' 


'*  THE  BEAST 

a  load  of  terror  gone  from  my  mind.     With  some 

sort  of  mstbctive  fear  of  financial  affair   I  ha"e 

see^iaVutas'my  Znt'^:^  T^'^  "''-  ' 
»!..>  o      J  ,  .       "^^""ness,  to  some  extent, 

that  saved  me  I  had  no  more  ambition  to  be 
nch.  and  for  that  reason  the  bribe  that  helped  to 
buy  Gardener  did  not  properly  tempt  „..  Thad 
not  h.s  ambition  to  be  promment  in  politics;  the 
law  satisfied  me  -  as  it  did  not  him  ~  and  I  had 
gone  mto  polit  cs  only  to  t,^  to  improve  the  laws 

deteliJaTion  T  ^''°""'  Wessiveness  and 
aetermmation;!  was  content  to  drift  along 
hopmg  for  the  best.  Yet  this  very  hope  was' 
pounded  in  a  silent  disinclination  Yo  drS  i„" 
any  crookedness;  and  as  Gardener  went  further 

getting  further  and  further  away  from  me. 

There  is  no  need  to  trace,  step  by  step  and 
incident  by  mcident.  the  misery  o^f  that  Zdual 
separation.     It  went  on  for  months,  and  Uwen 
on  m  silence.     I  could  not  speak  of  it.  for  few 
of  facing  the  truth  about  it.     Gardener  was  no 
hypocrite;  that    was    part    of    his    strength;  Z 
I  did  not  wish  to  hear  him  say  the  things  I  honed 
agamst.     But  I  could  not  bli/k  the  factf  for Zg 
They  kept  commg  to  me  from  other  people,  from 
friends  and  acquaintances  outside  the  office;  and 


THE  CAT  KEEPS  ON  PURRING        « 

H>e   "interests."    I  couM   „„,  *^  ^^"''^^  °f 

their  fees.     A  break "^tweeTcf/"   '''''^''"'S 
was  nevitable.     I  had  to  St  °''  '"'«1  »o 

shall  n^t/'foteTL-l  ?  ''®'^'''  "^  '^"^  'hat  I 

a-nsetthatZLuS'^oLr'  ""^  "•"'^-  «' 
hardener  had  cnS  ''lL  "        '"°""'''''' P««ks. 

;*e.     f.^  then,  c'aU  „,«  I'  •  tr  7/''?/  '''^^ 
I  m  goine  to  nlav  u,„  I  don't  care 

and  fherf ■:''oEl7„t  f^-.J"^  Pjay  ft  to  win  - 

to  sit  in  with  them."  Tcould  '"""''  """'' 
I  could  only  say  that  I  wouli  2  /"'""  '"''"• 
corporation  fees.  °'^  "*  "»  more 

From  his  point  of  view  he  was  r;„l,f        . 
own  point  of  view    I  I.n»  '^''''  """^  my 

-practical  to  arjl'e'^;  L'V''''/^^^  ""^ 
evidence, "all   th/;!„    l.  ''^  had  all  the 

and  I  ha/n  thtVbut^a  U7?'   °"   '"'^   «''^«' 
the  right,  a  feelbf  of  L  "^  '"""'^'^^  hope  in 

voice,  a  snJnTZlZTV''''  '  '^""''^  "»» 
"gain  the  whole  SS  »  Th  ."T''  ^^^^  '° 
up  to  the  mountain  top  ani  si  ^^ J''^^"  ''''° 
kingdonis  of  the  earth^"'  t  JL '"°  ""  '"-^ 
me  as  irrevocably  as  th.  ^\  •  ,  ^°"^  '''"m 
stn-ggledsohappV^X'  "  '^''"'^'^  ^^  ''^^ 
wath.""ir'wl^Ta'n:.— t.  '^  »  -'^  thing  to 

-p^-Co^sritiiij^h; 


I 


«4  THE  BEAST 

hope  and  idealism  in  which  we  had  lived.    It  wcs 
leaving  me  with  nothing  but  bitter  memories  and 
a  failure  that  almost  precluded  hope.    And  yet 
there  burned  in  the  sky  a  colour  of  wrath  that 
burned  in  me  too  in  a  hate  for  the  men  whom  we 
had  fought.    Nothing  was  sacred  to  them.    No 
one  was  too  low  for  them.    Laws  and  courts, 
judges  and  juries,  politicians  and  gamblers,  the 
Speaker  in  his  Chair  and  the  poor  fallen  creatures 
on   the  street— they   debauched   them   all   and 
bought  and  sold  them  all.    And  the  yoi  .n  who 
had  ideals,  who  had  intellect  and  ambition  —  he, 
too  — they   must   ha,ve   him.    They   must   have 
new  tools,  strong  tools,  to  replace  the  ones  they 
wore  out  and  cast  aside.    They  had  taken  Gar- 
dener.   He  had  gone.    If  they  had  done  nothing 
else,  that  alone  would  have  been  enough  to  make 
me  swear  never  to  forgive  them,  never  to  yield 
to  them  —  to  make  me  resolve  to  oppose  them,  to 
thwart  them  in  whatever  small  way  might  be  in  my 
small  power- to  make  me  fight  in  any  sort  of 
forlorn  hope  that  some  time  I  should  see  "a  new 
birth  of  freedom"  like  a  clean  day  arising  upon 
us,  on  our  city,  on  our  Capitol,  on  our  mountains 
that  I  watched  there,  almost  through  tears,  as 
they  grew  more  and  more  sombre  witn  the  fall  of 
night. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE   BEA8T  IN  THE   DEMOCRACY 

]yf  EANWHILE I  had  thought  I  ,aw  that  new 

hadthoughtso.  Ihadle.r.,;.dthatth^R  ^f^""^ 
machine  represented  no.)„„,  t  th.  Th  '" 
porations  of  the  city  and  tlu.  St  ,t,.      ^i  '""' 

concluded  that  the  Dem  ..;  J  '  ■  :'  '  "''""•''"y 
to  that  machine,  was  oZsed  ,fl  >  1  "^^"'"^ 
of  it.  I  knew  thar"T'^  "^.■^^";  '"  ^^"^  "^"«" 
DemocraticCl  ^Zed  f^t"- ^'  "->  ^^e 
the  gas  company  buTtS  w  '  '"  '^^  ^^^  °' 

and  his  henchmen  cid^'be'X'wd  "Jf  "^'^ 
party  would  be  purged  of  all  nnni  '   *''* 

might  "raise  a  standfrd  to  wiicrtr°-"  ""^  "* 
honest  might  repair"    TW  t  ^'««  «nd  the 

backed  b/  theTwer  o^  a      '"f  >  '  ^''■'"'^''••''' 
-.d  e  J  an  hoTsr  ^IC^'l^^/^^'  the^ 

riorr:;"  ?;Xl^^  -mu../Sd::;^ 

serviVw  f,.  »v.  '^  ^      •    ^  volunteered  mv 

services  to  the  opponents  of  Maloney.  ^ 

Ihey    were    led    by    Govemnr    Ti, 

BossSpeer-RobertW  w' J       *"    *"^ 
-'•  opeer,  who  comes  into 

u 


m 


*«  THE  BEAST 

7L'^7lu^"'^-  '**  ''"y-    "*  ^'^  '»'«°  the  presi- 
dent of  the  F.,e  and  Police   Board  of  Den^  . 

and   he    was   recognized    already    as   an    astute 

pohfcan.  very  smooth  and  very'  powerful     He 

was  a  man  nearly  six  feet  in  height,  unusuallv 

weighty,    with    a    round.    clean-shlvenTce    ^ 

heavy    muscles -with    his    thin    hair    trained 

oyer   h.s    mcreasing    baldness  -  his    skin    fresh 

h':  S  otrn  "^  ""^  strong-jawed  a.d  firm! 
He  had  called  a  meetmg  of  Governor  Thomas's 
fnends  m  h.s  own  re.l-estate  office  downtown 
one  evenmg.  and  I  attended,  sat  in  a  leathe; 
ch«.r.  jomed  in  the  discussion  and  was  .p^^Z 
I  UvZ       ^'''°'°""-'°^""  °^  tl^e  district  b  which 

InTr  '""  '^t  '''"'"  *^'''"  -  "  «"'y  •"  the  ranks 
—  and  I  was  happy. 

My  district  was  a  fashionable  v-arter,  on  Capitol 
H.     wher.  the  well-to-do  citizens  of  Denver  have 
built   their   residences    and    theii    coach    houses 
laid   out    their   rolled    lawns   and    planted    S 

tt^'^M-'*  \^'  ''"''''  ^^°  an'ovefwhSm! 
wh?  t?"'"  t"'7''  """^  ^  *''«"g'»t  I  knew 
why.  But  I  argued  that  though  the  rich  owners 
of  these  houses  were  naturally  of  the  party  of  the 
'mterests."  their  servants  wouid  not'^necUsarHv 
be  so;  and  when,  in  my  house-to-house  canvass". 
I  wa.  refused  admittance  at  a  front  door  I  went 

the  co„k"^K  T'  *"'*  '""'^'^  ♦"  '^'  '^"-^hman. 
the  cook,  the  furnace  man  and  the  servant  gir 


female  suffrage  in'  Colorado  even  27'  /^^  ''''' 
.   ^  aJways  got  a  much  m„  "'  °^  ''""Me.) 

»  the  servants'  hZ^hanT'T^''^^  ^'^'^S 
^^^^  I  got  any  hearint "/  n"i  "  ""^  P«''our 
««•  'nistress  of  the  hoi  eV^""  ^™"  '^e^^ajaster 
or  an  indifferent  one     i  1         "'"''"^  «  '^J'^'cal 
•^any  people  did  not  vote   anT"'"'^  *°  ^""^  ^"'^ 
-how  many  would  repjv  "v.    '""^'I  P™"*^  »'  '"* 
°°«  party  is   any    better'  ju^" '^^^  **«"»««  that 
.1'   a  Jot  of  thieves  together''       ."" "'''^'^  '''^^''^ 
^^ten   with   a   "whatV^he  ^s^^.'""  '"'"'^  ^^uld 
made  me  fed  I  ,,,,  ^^^J^'^     expression   that 
old  doctor,  as  soon  as  hi  K      .    ''*''^-     ^ne  curt 
f  ,  slammed  the  do"  t  tl "'"'  .^  '^^'^  ~ 
hn«h  my  explanations  H/r  '^"'^  '««  «««  to 
However,    my   work    was    n  .    ^^'  °««'e-plate. 
party's  primary,  I  h  J/f   ""'    'T'^^ted.    At   our 

say.  "Good  heavens,    itdr-      "^  ''PP""-'^ 
^'U"    girls     in    thp        ^'"*^'^ys  got  all  the  ser 

Malon!,,   n,;n''A„d"£/^^^"    '   '^^^^^^^ 
I  had  the  satisfaction 'of      "^  "*   '^^  «'«<^tions. 
-f  "-ty  in  our  dfsSt  tS"'  f'^  ^^P"^'-«n 
J  do  not  intend  fn     •  ^f  ^  reduced. 

fails  of  the'TgltXeCe  -tr"v;^•^  "■— 

!°n  and  the  Sp^,  f.^^^^"  f «.  Maloney  fac- 
---ed  myself  hymy::^ce:-X-^^- 


I* 


«8  THE  BEAST 

I  was  elected  a  Speer  delegate 'to  the  local  con- 
vention, and  1  helped  to  pick  candidates  for  the 
Legislature  who  should  cast  their  votes  for  Gov- 
ernor   Thomas    as    United    States    Senator.    I 
became   chairman  of   the  Credential  Committee 
in  the  Democratic  County  Convention,  and  was 
then  made  secretary  of  the  delegation  to  the  State 
Convention.     All  this  gave  me  considerable  prom- 
inence and  a  good  deal  of  influence;  but  it  showed 
me  a  near  view  of  more  political  obliquity  than 
I  had  expected  to  see  in  oor  party.     I  found,  for 
example,  that  the  men  with  whom  I  was  work- 
ing were  thinking  onh  of  the  spoils  of  office  that 
would  accrue  to  them  if  they  won.     I  heard  one 
man,  who  was  a  city  inspector,  say:  "My  job's 
only    worth    $1,500    salary,    but    I    easily    make 
$3,000   on   the  side"  —  in   graft,   of  course.     In 
answer  to  some  moral  objections  to  the  candidacy 
of  a  very  corrupt  and  dissolute  man  for  a  place 
on  the  ticket,  one  of  the  politicians  replied:  "Oh, 
you  can  put  any  kind  of  yellow  dog  on,  so  long 
as  you   have  a   'nice  man'   at   the  head   of  the 
ticket.    They'll  vote  it  straight.    Don't  worry  about 
that."     It    was    all    "practical"    politics,    but    it 
rather  soiled  my  new  hope  in  the  people's  party. 
I  began  to  see  that  the  politicians  with  whom  I 
was  working  were  not  so  unlike  the  ones  with 
whom  I  had  fought. 

What  seemed  to  puzzle  them  all  was  the  fact 
that  I  showed  no  ambition  to  be  nominated  for 


Tffl:  BEAST  IN  THE  DEMOCRACY  ,« = 
any  office      Th^,,         •.  "^"^iiACir  59. 

had  worked^ard.  DurL  1  ""'  *'"  *^^'"-  ^ 
I  did  not  go  ho.e  for  roCeLTu'^  T'^^* 
Speer  at  a  hotel  and  helrx^,!  T.     '•.^"'  ''^^d  with 

-s  of  oflFence  ani '^e 'iTl  t" '^ '"^-- 
incidents   of  a   factinnpl  ■     "''''^  "P  'he 

convention  in  the  oZ'  H^"""'u  ^'  '^'  '-«' 
been  a  riot;  revoIveHi T''  "T  '^^''  '^''"-t 
had  had  to  hold  our  i^fr""'"  ■'"u"'""-  ^"^'  "« 
our  hands.  All  th"s  hT'"^.  "'*'*  ""'  ''^-  >" 
very  friendly  tolan  j^l^f  Ti  ^"P^""'- 
«nd  they  told  me  thaT  T  !     ''  '^""f^^--^  '^^  - 

for  something  from  JL  T^  "'""'^  ""'  '"  '-'^ 
work  I  had  done  TwP^'  '"  f^*"™  for  the 
things,  that  I  mLt  irJ  '''^^'''^-  ^ong  other 
office  of  DistricXort;"  '  "'''"'''''''  ^^  '^e 

-Sinit^e^TJSrLd';?^^^  •"-*''- 

er's  idea  that  the  corruo  '  if  u- 1" "*""'•  '^f"™- 
-uld  be  checkec™rrpu:ii^''iT°PP-'l 
guardians  of  the  Z  w„  n  '  "'^  P^^Hc 
duty;  and  it  seem,d  torl°"'^  '^^  *heir 
Attorney  was  one3L  t^'    '^^   ^'^trict 

-ffi-als'  I  sarmysl^  a'ltPr-f'"'  "^  ">- 
of  public  prosecutor  wihaTu"^  ""^  °^'^ 
prospect  iave  me  a  ecref  \^"''^'  ''"^  the 
chuckle.  I  soun7ed  Boss  tr  ','"'  ""^^  '"« 
•■nation;  he  said  that  C  '^  ''''°"'  "'''  "»'"- 
already  promised  the  p.acrLT/rry'J"  si;' 


If 


I 


i 


*•  THE  BEAST 

a  young  politician,  who.,  name  on  the  ticket 
-It  was  freely  said  -  would  ensure  a  large 
campaign  contribution  from  one  of  the  Denver 
public  utility  corporations.  I,  of  course,  had  no 
such  support  to  offer,  and  the  party  needed  funds. 
1  said  no  more  about  the  matter. 

But  I  had  already  spoken  of  it  to  Gardener 
-  with  whom  I  was  still  in  nominal  partnership  - 
and  he  had  jumped  at  the  idea  with  an  eager- 
ness that  w-a«  afterward  to  be  explained  to  me. 
When  I  told  hin.  what  Speer  had  said,  he  advised 
Tui*"  ''tT."^.  '*■  "^"^^  ^  fig^t,"  he  coun- 
It  can't  be.     I'll  help."  ^ 

I  have  spoken  in  a  previous  chapter  of     Ed 
Chase,  ^  gambler,  and    of    his    offer    to    pay 
Gardener',    first    election     expen.es.      He     was 
reputed  to  be  a  millionaire,  and  he  lived  then  - 
r      ^uwf    "«^'-'°    considerable    luxury    on 
Capitol  Hill,  a«d  associated  with  the  most  repu- 
table business  i»en  of  the  community.     He  was 
greatly  respected  m  various  quarters,  and  he  had 
alJ  sorts  of  good  qualities,  no  doubt;  but  he  made 
his  money  out  of  numerous  gambling  hells  and 
policy  joints  which  he  had  conducted  for  years 
m   Denver  under   both   political   parties;  and   it 
was   understood   that   he   was   one  of  the  three 
men  who  afterward  formed  the  gambling  "trust" 
of  Denver.    He  was  also  a  stockholder  in  sev- 
eral   utility   corporations,    and    his    influence   in 


THE  BEAST  IN  THE  DEMOCRACY    61 

Pol  tics  was  well  known.  There  w«,  , 
«««wst  gambling,  of  course  Zl  ♦  *  '*'* 
'nodieally  enforced  when  n^bll^  I  ""'^^  'f"^' 
Hied  a  pretence,  at  leL'^S  !  "^"^  '*"'- 
for  the  most  part  tli  'iSl  Prosecution;  but 
with   the   appLval   of  ^r      u^  ^'^^  "'"'  *'°»«" 

believe  that'^Cl "^^Tce tlT l"^"   ^^ 
keeping    a    "wW.  ..  P*  business  by 

(The/once  goTutTL. >''"'■  ^""""^'^^  *-- 
public  gamblf:*  i^De!:T:.  l^^""'  °'  ^^P^ 

One   of  Gardener's   firl;  ^'gument.) 

campaign  to  procure  mf  '°°'"''  "  '"'^  ^''^'^ 
brmg  CW  tHur  offit  at  "T""*""'  ^"^  *° 
bim.    The  visit  Z.  "'''*^  ™^  '"  to  see 

't  -n.  1X1"^:;^"^^'"  '^  ^-y  '^  -'^e 
dental.  At  any  rate  T  ^  ^"  "  """  *«^«. 
ioeular  and  *>ah.W"  Lro;"""'  °f  '"  '*"»* 
-I'ich  a  man  who  is  fusicted  Lr""  ^""'^'  '" 
i«  introduced  to  a  nrn^l   ?!u       ^'"^  squeamish 

Chase  was  I^n  elS    irml'^^itr  ^  ^  ,^'>-- 
moustache.     He  would  nT        ^'^^S^ray  hair  and 

clean  "office  maXtefd'o^r'^.  T  '^  "''*• 
appearance -as    h/!  "  *'^"'*''  «"''  bis 

cSu.  dr,good::;;^wr:;;  tz  -^  %t 

church.     Hesaidlitnl      r     7  ^*'*''°"  °^  bis 

I  knew  tbat^S^as^atS  o?;trf  "^• 
a  contributor  to  our  can,n«;I  ?  f  .'  ^P^'' 
therefore,    who    would    U^      "'^  """^  *  »"*"' 

about    the    c„ndiri\t\:r:tt"^"^ 
-ted  on  our  ticket.    Gardener  expl:ined^hrtl■ 


i  I 


68  THE  BEAST 

account  of  a  crusade  which  the  "reformers"  had 
been  making  against  gambling.  Chase  was  par- 
ticularly interested  in  the  District  Attorney's 
oflSce.  And  Gardener,  as  being  friendly  to  both 
a  prospective  District  Attorney  and  to  the  man 
whom  that  official  would,  perhaps,  have  to  pros- 
ecute, went  on  to  explaui  —  smiling  from  one 
to  the  other  —  that  Chase  did  not  expect  to 
escape  prosecution,  that  he  understood  his  men 
would  be  hauled  into  court  occasionally  and 
fined  the  limit,  and  that  he  would  not  embarrass 
me  by  resenting  any  such  grand-stand  plays. 

"You  know,  Ben,"  Gardener  said,  "Mr.  Chase 
doesn't  want  anything  but  what's  fair.  He 
doesn't  expect  to  run  wide  open  all  the  time. 
Whenever  the  District  Attorney  has  to  make  a 
demonstration,  he's  willing  to  pay  up.  That's 
understood.  You  needn't  feel  worried  about  that. 
Need  he?" 

Chase,  it  seemed  to  me,  was  a  little  embar- 
rassed. He  stroked  his  moustache,  rubbed  his 
chin,  nodded  when  he  was  appealed  to,  and 
relieved  his  gravity  with  a  half-reluctant  smile. 
I  listened,  and  kept  my  thoughts  to  myself. 

"They  don't  want  you  to  do  anything  crooked, 
Ben,"  Gardener  laughed.  "All  they  want  is  fair 
play.  You  know  gambling  can't  be  stopped  as 
long  as  men  want  to  gamble.  You  can  handle  the 
thing  in  a  practical  way.  They'll  be  reasonable. 
You  needn't  be  afraid  of  offending  your  friends." 


63 


made 


THE  BEAST  IN  THE  DEMOCRACY 

♦     I  replied,  at  last,  that  my  nomination  w 
settled  upon,  at  all  -  that  I  had  not  even 
up  my  own  mind  about  it  yet.     And  I  backed  out 
of  the  mterview,  at  the  first  opportunity,  as  unos- 
tentatiously  as  I  could. 

I  understood  that  Gardener,  being  now  very 
Ultimate  with  Chase,  wished  to  get  him  to  throw 
bis  influ«sice  for  my  nomination.     A  few  min- 
utes  laten  I  understood  why  he   was   so   eager. 
When  Chase  had  gone.   Gardener  came  to  mv 
room  ,n  the  office,  in  high  feather.     Why'  with 
me  as  DBtrict  Attorney  and  himself  as  counsel  for 
the   gamblers,   we   could   make   $25,000   a  year 
outside  my  salary -without  the  slightest  danger 
of  becommg  "inrolred"  -and  at  the  same  tfaie 
gam  all  the  credit  from  the  community  of  enforc- 
mg  the  law  and  prosecuting  the  gamblers.     No 
doubt  of  It.     The  game  had  been  played  in  this 
way,  in  Denver,  before. 

I  understood  the  uselessness  of  arguing  with 
these  men.  If  I  replied  that  I  was  not  in  politics 
for  my  pocket"  and  wished  to  do  what  was 
straight,  they  would  only  give  me  credit  for 
bemg  either  less  honest  than  they  were  -  since 
1  added  hypocrisy  to  guilt  -  or  of  bemg  an 
impractical  "goody-goody"  who  had  no  busi- 
ness m  politics.  I  had  learned,  too,  the  value  of 
keeping  my  own  counsel,  if  I  was  to  get  any 
of  the  reforms  I  wished  from  the  very  "prac- 
ticai     men  whom  conditions  had  put  in  power 


•*  THE  BEAST 

So  I  simply  lold  Gankner  that  I  was  not  Dig- 
trict  Attorney,  and  b»d  no  prospect  of  beiag.  I 
got  away  from  him  -  feelmg  rather  sick  at  heart 
—  and  dismissed  the  matter  fh)«i  my  mind 
with  relief.  "1  didn't  understand  you,  Ben,"' 
he  told  me  long  after.  "And  I  don't  believe 
you  unde  -od  yourself."  Pertiaps  not.  I  was 
not  trying  to  understand  »;.seif.  I  was  trying 
to  fand  :  y  way  through  the  jungle  into  which  I 
nad  walked  so  gailv. 

One  thing  was  ^>eii*in:  I   could   not   maintain 
even  a  nominal  partnership  with  Gardener  any 
longer.     I  should  either  have  to  start  out  in  law 
for  myself  or  take  a  political  office.     Boss  Speer 
when  next   I   met  him,   said:  "Ben.  you've  got 
some  strong  backing  for  District  Attorney.    Chase 
has  been  *p  to  see  me.     He  says  he's  jor  you'" 
I  accepted  the  honour  of  his  support  —  resolved 
that  k   I  ever  got  the  office  I  should   play  the 
deuce  with  some  of  the  gentlemen  who  had  put 
me   m    it  —  but   I   imagine,   from   what   I   have 
learned    since,    that    all    this    "strong    backing- 
came  from  Gardener.     Governor  Thomas,  shortly 
after,  assured  me  that  the  nomination  had  been 
irrevocably  promised  to  Harry  A.  Lindsley  (who 
was  elected),  and  I  let  the  matter  drop,     (har- 
dener said  to  me,  years  later,  when  he  had  become 
leadmg  counsel   for   the   head   of  the  gamblers' 
syndicate:  "Chase    was    saying,    only    the    other 
day,   what   a   narrow   escajw   we  had   when   we 


THE  BEAST  IN  THE  DEMOCRACY  65 
picked  you  for  Districl  Atlomey.  He  said  v„«'^ 
have  rawed  hell  with  us.  sure"    And  T  i  r 

up  at  th.  caucus     C  U  ,      '*""  '^*"  "***« 

to'u.e  thatTe  Denv  r  ar;^"r"'  ^^P"""«^ 
and  the  Denver  Union  W^ercZ""^  ^""'"'"^ 
Peter  L.  Palmer  a,  „    "^"'«' C°'"P«ny  favoured 

backed  ,-Z^S:Z  pVret/:  it^"'^^'  '^' 
contribution;  and  I  wasTnnnJ  ^-  '^'»™P»'gn 
good  of  the  part."    On    he  ?,T;k    ^°'  "'^ 

nages  and  automobL  lohrb^/tn^       ™'" 

incredible,  I  know  thit  in   I^T^        ""'^^  '^"^ 

tuat  in   later    campaigns    it 


66 


THE  BEAST 


1.  i 


I! 


amounted  to  S^.'J.OOO  for  the  city  alone;  and  thia 
item  of  cost  formed  only  a  small  portion  of  the 
whole  expense,  even  in  the  city.  I  helped  to 
select  the  members  of  our  finance  committee, 
who  had  to  raise  the  funds  for  the  campaign ;  and 
I  learned  that  these  men  were  selected  because 
of  their  connection  with  wealthy  corporations. 
Our  chairman,  Milton  Smith,  for  example,  was 
attorney  for  the  telephone  company  and  —  at 
times  —  for  the  gas  company,  the  brewers,  the 
gamblers  and  all  the  rest  of  that  ring.  Several 
other  members  of  the  committee  were  similarly 
connected.  But  then,  it  was  pointed  out,  the 
director  and  chief  organizer  of  the  Republican 
campaign,  was  "Big  Steve"! 

There  was  much  voluble  concern  as  to  which 
campaign  committee  would  get  the  largest  con- 
tributions; and  it  began  to  dawn  upon  me  that 
instead  of  being  a  contest  of  parties,  the  election 
was  going  to  be  a  contest  of  corporations,  through 
their  paid  agents,  for  the  control  of  the  machin- 
ery of  government.  The  "workers"  in  the  ranks 
of  the  fight  were  working  for  nothing,  apparently, 
but  the  promise  of  this  or  that  picayune  "job" 
under  the  politicians.  The  politicians  were  strug- 
gling for  nothing,  apparently,  but  the  offices  and 
the  graft  to  which  they  hoped  to  be  elected.  The 
corpomtions,  over  them  all,  were  apparently  using 
them  all  to  keep  themselves  above  the  laws  by 
owning  the  sources  and  the  agents  of  the  law. 


Tire  BEAST  IN  THE  DEMOCILVCY 

And  the  people?    The  "dear  people"?  In 


67 

thp    nr,Vo. '  ■"■"   ."""l^"P'e    f  in  none  of 

the     pnva  e    conversations    or    .secret    caucuses 
of  the  pol,t,c.an,,.   do  I   rememhcr  hearinrihe 

had  yet  to  induce  to  buy  stock.  " 

That,  at  least,  was  the  situation  as  I  look  back 
upon  ,t  now  -  as  a  man  having  strugded  ?hr„„rJ 
a  b.t  of  tangled  underwood.  .'.ks"b^l'  '^rj 
from  a  clearmg  on  a  rise  of  ground.  At  thftlme 
I  could  not  see  the  forest  for  the  trees.     I    ^w 

the  r-  "I  ""/'"^''  P"^'^^'"'^  ^he  election.  buT 
the  struggles  of  one  „r  another  organiza.im.  To 
obtain  some  partisan  advantage  by  getting  h! 
or  that  party  Judge  and  his  cfurt 'to'g^^'them 
an  unfair  ballot,  to  complicate  it  by  puttinruo 
tickets-  with  misleading  designations  and  ^o 
confuse  the  unfriendly  voter  in  so'^e  way  orotheJ 
for  the  party's  iM-nefit.  I  saw  the  iudires  on  fh 
bench  called  into  political  conferenc^n  pH,! 
whTV        f"'*^  ""^•^  '•^^^■^   -   advlnce.'^  And 

Dont  be  too  squea.n.sh.  young  man.  This 
IS  the  way  the  game  is  played." 

At  first  it  seemed  that  our  party  would  win 
both  state  and  county  elections.^Tt  as  S  IZ 
approached  we  heard  that  one  band  of  corporZ 

Wall    Street    affiliations  -  wa^    determined    that 


tl 


MKaocorr  ksoiution  nst  chaut 

(ANSI  and  ISO  TEST  CHART  No.  2) 


\m  iiiiii  ii 


^  APPLIED  IVMBE     U 

M-W  16^ J   Eait   Mam  Slmt 

-^5  BocfiMter,   New   York         U609        US^ 

^E  (^'6)   *63  -  0-00  -  Phone 

^£  ("6)  288-5989  -Fa. 


I 


68  THE  BEAST 

the  Republicans  should  carry  the  county.  Money 
began  to  flow  victoriously  from  the  Republican 
headquarters.  Our  finance  committeemen  began 
to  wail  that  some  of  the  corporations  that  had 
promised  contributions  now  refused  them.  It 
was  as  if  an  army  had  been  deserted,  not  by  its 
leaders,  but  by  the  very  government  that  supplied 
its  pay  chest!  The  United  States  Marshal,  bemg 
a  Republican  official,  began  to  swear  in  a  little 
army  of  deputy  marshals,  composed  of  all  sorts 
of  thugs  and  Negro  rowdies,  to  do  "police  duty" 
at  the  polls.  The  Fire  and  Police  Board,  being 
Democratic,  swore  in  special  policemen  to  oppose 
them;  but,  on  account  of  the  deficit  in  the  pay- 
roll, the  Board  could  not  compete  on  equal  terms 
with  the  Marshal.  Then  the  Democratic  organ- 
ization appealed  to  the  courts,  and  the  Marshal 
was  enjoined  by  law  from  interfering  with  the 
election.  But  the  Republicans  still  had  the 
money.  They  went  to  the  Democratic  Sheriff  of 
the  coimty  and  bought  his  office  for  three  days 
for  $20,000  —  according  to  the  confession  after- 
ward made  —  and  swore  in  their  outlawed 
deputy  marshals  as  deputy  sheriffs.  Thus  the 
Democrats  —  or  rather,  the  corporations  behind 
them  —  had  the  police  and  the  city  jail  to  aid 
them  at  the  polls;  and  the  Republicans  —  or 
the  corporations  whom  they  represented  —  had 
the  Sheriff  and  the  county  jail.  And  the  stage 
was  set  for  riot  and  murder. 


THE  BEAST  IN  THE  DEMOCRACY    60 

Riot  and  murder  came,  with  the  opening  of 
the  polls.  I  had  been  at  work  all  night -b 
charge  of  Democratic  headquarters  during  th^ 
Illness  o  our  chairman -and  I  had  Iain  Vv^ 
in  my  clothes,  exhausted,  toward  daybreak^ 
was  awakened  to  receive  a  telephone  report 
;T"^^,°'  "'"  watchers,  that  there  was  going 
to  be  hell  to  pay  at  Twenty-second  and  Larimer  » 
^^  Ihese  cursed  nigger  deputy  sheriffs."  he  said 
are  buttmg  in  here.  Our  men  won't  stand  for  it' 
It  means  a  shootmg.  Some  one  had  better  hustle 
down  from  headquarters  and  try  to  settle  it  " 

I  hurried  downstairs  (our  headquarters  were  in 
the   Brown    Palace   Hotel),   called   a   cab.    and 
ordered  the  driver  to  get  me  to   Twenty-second 
and  Larimer  as  quickly  as  he  could.    The  streets 
were  quiet  and  empty  in  the  dingy  light  of  a  cold 
November  mommg.  and  we  clattered  down  Eigh- 
teenth Street  at  a  noisy  gallop.     We  swung  i^to 
Larimer  Street,  m  front  of  the  Windsor  Hotel  - 
the  very  hotel  that  at  my  first  arrival  in  Denver 
had  seemed  so  high  and  so  magnificent !- and 
we  had  httle  more  than  passed  it  when  the  driver 
pulled  up  with  a  suddenness  that  almost  shot 
me  from  my  seat.    I  flung  open  the  cab  door 
and  thrust  out  my  head  to  see  what  was  the  mat- 
ter.   The  street  was  full  of  excited  people  who 
seemed  to  be  scurrying  this  way  and  that;  and 
over  their  heads  there  hung  a  thin  cloud  of  smoke, 
very  still  m  the  dead  air.    As  I  jumped  out  and 


«'! 


i^ 


70 


THE  BEAST 


ran  toward  the  polling  place,  I  saw  a  policeman 
lying  behind  a  telegraph  pole,  in  a  quivering 
huddle,  writhing  painfully;  a  Negro  sprawled  in 
blood  in  the  gutter;  a  little  knot  of  men  were 
supportmg  a  wounded  man  to  a  drugstore;  the 
gongs  of  ambulance  and  patrol  wagons  sounded 
their  warnings  from  a  distance;  and  while  men 
came  running  up,  as  I  ran,  to  see  what  had  hap- 
pened, others  quietly  made  off  down  the  street. 

I  went  over  to  the  Negro.  The  murder  that 
had  been  bought  and  paid  for,  lay  at  my  feet. 
His  mute  eyes  were  wide  open;  a  puzzled  frown 
puckered  his  black  forehead  that  was  wrinkled 
like  an  ape's.  He  lay  there  — the  broken  tool 
of  those  same  criminals  that  had  used  the  Clerk 
of  the  House  whom  I  had  seen  bleeding  m  the 
Capitol  —  flung  aside  now  m  the  gutter,  dead, 
but  with  this  sort  of  dumb  question  staring  at  me 
from  his  poor,  bestial,  bewildered  face. 

The  physical  revulsion  of  the  sight  nauseated 
me.  When  a  man  touched  me  on  the  shoulder 
I  started,  with  a  shudder,  as  if  I  had  been  the 
author  of  that  horror  myself. 
"They  began  it,"  he  said. 
They  had,  indeed,  begun  it,  as  I  found  out 
when  I  followed  the  police  and  their  prisoners 
to  the  City  Hall  station,  and  got  a  confession 
from  the  Negroes  there.  And  in  my  indignation 
against  the  Republican  machine,  I  accused  the 
Republicans  to  the  reporters,  and  gloated  over 


f:i 


I  ■  t 


THE  BEAST  IN  THE  DEMOCRACY  71 

ttn^  I»K  the  cnnie  on  the  Republicans  who 
had  sent  those  irresponsible  Negroes  to  the  poFls 

begun  It?     Or  had  it  been  begun  by  the  men 
who  gave  the  money  to  hire  them  -  the  headTof 
the  warring  corporations   who  were  determined 
to  w„  that  election  at  the  muzzle  of  the    evX ' 
•f  need  be,  so  that  they  might  be  the  owners  of  the 
hung  Junes   the  paid  speakers,  the  venal  derks 
the  unjust  judges,  the  free  gamblers  and  aH  the 
vice  and  graft  that  should  keep  tkem  in  pollS 
Yes.     The  men  who  had  ruined  young  Gardener 
had  shed  that  blood.     The  question  o^  the  dead 
face  of  that  miserable  creature  in  the  gutter  was 
theirs  to   answer.    And   some   day.   sf^ewhere 
somehow,  they  shall  answer  ~  let  us  hope. 

Ihat  was  my  experience  in  the  election  of  1900 
Those  were  the  lessons  I  lear     '  from  it.     Those 

left  S'tlTT?'""*'"'"^"^--''-"  have 
left  t^  the  last  because  it  was  a  lessen  of  hope, 
and  because   m  spite  of  all.  it  seems  to  me  there 
is  still  ground  for  hope. 
This  was  it: 

nTv  ^  '    Roosevelt,    then    Governor   of 

New  York,  came  to  Denver,  and  he  was  challenged 

the  %°^"T  ^^"""^^  *"  ^^^^"^  '''«  position^f 
the  Republican  party  upon  certain  issues  of  the 
contest.     Colorado  was  a  free-silver  state,  almost 


:r! 


i( 


h! 


72 


THE  BEAST 


If 


liii. 


unanimously,  and  the  game  was  to  make  Roose- 
velt either  embarrass  his  party  or  himself  by  forc- 
ing him  to  handle  the  free-silver  question  before 
an  audience  that  would  resent  the  opinions  of 
an  Eastern  "gold-bug"  however  mildly  he  might 
put  them. 

The  Opera  House  wa-   packed  with  people. 
Senator  Lodge,  of  Massac   ..setts,  held  their  atten- 
tion for  a  time,  but  they  were  impatient  to  hear 
"Teddy."    He   was   late.     He   had   not  arrived 
yet.     Expectation  became  noisy,  restless,  inimical. 
Presently  we  heard  the  low  grumble  of  a  crowd 
shouting  in  the  street.     The  word  was  cried  about 
that  he  was  coming.    And  almost  immediately, 
b  a  crash  of  music  from  the  band,  he  strode  down 
to  the  footlights  and  faced  the  shouting  audience. 
He    looked    tired.    But    without    waiting    for 
silence,  with  his  head  down  as  if  he  were  about 
to  charge,  he  bared  his  teeth  and  uttered  some- 
thing unintelligible,  in  a  hoarse  voice.    The  audi- 
ence roared.     He  took  a  long  breath,  watching 
them,  dogged,  determined,  filling  his  lungs;  and 
then  — with   a   sudden   gesture   that   compelled 
silence  —  he  screamed  at  them,  with  all  his  teeth 
showing: "  We— stand —on  a— ^oZd- platform!" 
It  came  to  them  like  a  blow  in  the  face;  and 
before  they  could  take  voice,  he  added,  pound- 
ing out  the  words  with  his  fist:  "We  stand  for 
the  same  thing  in  Colorado  that  we  stand  for  in 
New  York!" 


m 


THE  BEAST  IN  THE  DEMOCRACY  73 

toS^S  °"  ^"^^"-    "^^^  ^*'°"*  «^  «PP'-"«e  that 
followed  came  m  a  roar  of  delight  from  a  thou- 
sand throats.     They  cheered  him  as  if  L  had 
sa.d  the  one  thing  .hey  had  been  waiting  to  het 
mstead   o    the  very  thing  that  no   Republican 
^Ijhcan  m  Denver  would  have  dared  to^wh  pe^ 
to  any  smgle  one  of  them,  in  the  dark,  behind 
a   locked   door      They   cheered   him   as   if  Z 
would    spht    their    throats.    A    startled    DemZ 
crat,c  politician  who  stood  near  me  cried:  "Gr^at 
ZIT:    A^T'^  converted  this  crowd  to  the 
gold  standard,  has  he?"     (The  wisdom  of  poH? 
hcians!)     They  cheered  his  courage,   his  trmh 
h.s  defiance  of  political  hedging,  hif  Lonesty^' 
inanhness.    It  was  the  cheer  of  pride,  of  lov^ 
of  admiration.    It  was  the  voice  of  o^r  peopfe 

^'teti^Tho;:.*™''*"^"'^^-  ''--'^ 

I  went  home,  that  night,  resolved  never  to  for- 
get the  lesson.     Often  since,  when  I  have  faced 
he  hoot  of  prejudiced  opposition  from  my  own 
small  stage  m  public  life.  I  have  rememberld 

my  throat  for  another  defiance.    For  I  believe 
m  that  way.  with  our  people,  there  is  hope 


itj: 


i 


if  • 


■I'  I 


I 


U   'I 

nil 


u 


iMi' 


'■   ■  k 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  BEAST  IN  THE  COUNTY  COURT 

WELL,  the  Democrats  carried  the  county 
and  the  state  in  November,  1900,  aid 
our  "people's  party"  was  put  m  power;  but  I  no 
longer  had  any  of  the  illusions  with  which  I  had 
volunteered  in  the  battle.  I  had  found  that 
most  of  my  companipns  in  the  straggle  were  not 
patriots  but  hired  mercenaries,  fighting  —  as  our 
opponents  fought  —  under  the  black  flag  of  cor- 
poration pirates.  I  had  as  much  hope  of  get- 
ting my  reform  laws  passed  by  the  machine  "  bosses  " 
as  a  man  might  have  of  getting  a  city  charter  for 
a  South  American  town  from  a  party  of  buccan- 
eers who  had  taken  th«  place  for  pillage.  I  had 
drawn  up  our  threatened  constitutional  amend- 
ment for  Gardener,  but  I  knew  he  would  never 
fight  for  it;  and,  of  course,  he  never  did.  I  was  at 
a  standstill,  helpless,  and  not  merely  discouraged 
but  convinced  that  there  was  nothing  I  could  do. 
While  I  was  in  this  state  of  mind,  I  was  offered, 
as  a  "political  reward,"  the  oflSoe  of  Judge  of  the 
County  Court,  to  succeed  Judge  R.  W.  Steele, 
who  had  been  elected  to  the  Supreme  Court  and 
had   left  the   county  bench  empty.    Under  ihe 

74 


THE  BEAST  IN  THE  COUNTY  COURT  75 

one  of  the  heads  of  t),»  i       £      .  """^   "'"n 

"illee  ^,3  .  "'^  ^•"'■""lio  E,e™,|„  Com. 

is.'^r  £-•--»-=  af^: 

j^      X    snail    nere    content    mvsplf   nrJn,    j 

and  Dersonnl  .■„«.,  "^  '*"s  polit  cal 

«"u  personal  influence  on  my  behalf   th^  n 

^-s   of  a   discontinued   showrrti"  Sn' 

It  h«  been  •  Wblarted"  since  thi,  w«  written. 


if 


76  THE  BEAST 

the  pinnacle  of  the  building's  dome  there  stands 
the  inevitable  emblematical  figure  of  Justice,  but 
it  has  been  twice  struck  by  lightning  —  equally 
emblematically,  no  doubt!— so  that  Justice  has 
lost  not  only  her  scale=  but  the  arm  ;hat  upheld 
them.     Here,  b  the  usual  dingy  court  room,  with 
the  usual  drone  of  court  officials  and  the  usual 
forensic  eloquence  of  counsel  addressing  the  usual 
yawns  of  bored  juries,  the  county  court  was  held. 
It  was  then  —  as  it  is,  now  —  the  busiest  court 
in  the  state.     It  had  jurisdiction  to  try  eLction 
contests  and  such   political    lawsuits;   it   had  a 
varied  and  general  jurisdiction  in  civil  cases  in 
which  property  to  the  value  of  not  more  than 
$2,000  was  involved  — for  which  reason  it  was 
called   "the   poor   man's"   and    "the   people's" 
court;  it  was  the  court  of  appeal  from  police 
magistrates   and   justices   of  the   peace;   it   had 
criminal  jurisdiction  in  all  "misdemeanours"  and 
in  "felonies"  where  the  accused  was  under  twenty- 
one  years  of  age;  and  in  addition,  it  was  the  pro- 
bate court  for  the  city  and  the  county.    I  was 
just  thirty  years  of  age  when  I  took  charge  of  it. 

I  knew  that  Judge  Steele,  whom  I  succeeded, 
was  an  upright  and  just  judge,  on  ^hom  no  party 
and  no  corporatitn  had  had  any  "strings."  And 
in  taking  his  place  on  the  bench,  I  saw  myself  ris- 
ing above  all  the  political  sculduggery  through 
which  I  had  been  struggling  so  long—  to  look 
down  on  it  untempted,  with  a  judge's  honour 


Beard  of  County  Comm;    .  °"'*'''      "'hom  the 

appoint  to  office^b"';;::;"?/'-^''^'^  ™^  "> 
succeed  skilled  clerics  VhTu\,  T  ^  e*Pef.ed  to 

vice  of  the  court  ft  tJn  and  fif^"  '"  "'^  ^ 
thej;  had  no  qualificaS„s  tr  lu''"  T"'  ""'^ 
wished  to  fill.     Thev«!«;   !i         ."'^   P''*''"   "»ey 
'••cans  did  it  "  thaf  '^  "'  "''"  "''»«  «epub- 

and  that  if  iloSi,"^  ^"'j  '^"l"'-^  H  of'lne. 
--t  be  lo/a.  nt"  W^^n'  tf"  '':,  "'^  ^'^''^  ^ 
single  clerk  "walk  the  Zk  »  th'-  ■'',  ""''^  •* 
was  amazinjf.     Mv  tZJ^   ^'  ...^^""  'ndignation 

-e  that  I  nfed  2  ™  a  rL  ^"'"^''  ^"^'^^ 
bench;  and  the  worker  „        «n«°»nation  to  the 

got  a  reno.inati:nt:;  r,d'.SV'^'  '  '  ^^^' 
-Oils.  When  I  pointed  „T,rfW  .^^^  me  at  the 
be  run  efficientlvTnThr-  /  '  '*""  *=°"'  '^'^^  'o 
^hey  replied:  "  y';u  ,  tdtrtt  t  ''^  "^"P'^' 
ven.on.how«uchthepeopre  'art'''  next  con- 
Inen  Mr.  Pr«)    p  nr  :. 

came    to    me    with    -    ^  ■  ™^  "'*'   '^^ce, 

«««.  „,  Ob  t.Lnrhi  'J" '  •'"'■'■' 


J     J 


■^8  THE  BEAST 

would  see  that  I  had  the  proper  reward  for  my 
«.grat.tude      (I  had  to  appoint  him.  later,  in  one 
case,  m  which  the  litigants  demanded  it.)    And 
finally,  a  layer-politician  -  an  old  friend  whom 
I  have  not  the  heart  to  name  -  arrived  with  an 
mcredible  proposition  that  I  should  use  my  power 
M  judge  to  have  him  appointed  -  whereve^pos- 
sible- guardian,  administrator  or  referee,  as  the 
case  might  require,  in  the  suits  that  should  come 
before  me;  and  he  in  return  would  divide  his  fees 
with  me      (He  has  been  my  consistent  enemy  in 
the  legislature  ever  since  my  refusal  to  enter  into 
mat  abominable  conspiracy  with  him.) 

It  was  with  a  saddened  pride,  at  last,  that  I  took 
my  place  on  the  bench.  I  had  dropped  my  part- 
nership with  Senator  Gardener.  I  hVd  only  nine 
months  of  office  before  me.  And  already  my 
party  had  turned  against  me  and  my  prospects  of 
any  future  as  a  judge  were  as  blank  as  despair 

However,  the  mills  of  Justice  began  i,  rind- 
and  I  was  there  to  see  that  everything  in  the  /aopper 
passed  truly  between  the  stones.  Sitting  behind 
a  desk  that  looked  as  if  it  had  been  desi«,ed  as  a 
wooden  sepulchre,  I  acted  as  public  umpire  in  will 
ca^es  that  mvolved  interminable  petty  family  quar- 
rels, or  in  real-estate  cases  where  one  long  file  of 
Witnesses  swore  to  the  falseness  of  the  testimony 
of  another  file  equally  long,  or  in  divorce  pro- 
ceedings f,,r  non-support,  tiresomely  formal  and 
undefended  usually  (probably  because  they  had 


THE  BEAST  IN  THE  COUNTY  COURT  ,o 
«>een  prearraneed)    or   „  •      .     .      ^"URT  79 
deputes  Ut^S\ZlZd\        ."^  """^    '^^•'>"'<=ai 
">d  creditors,  pur  h^l '^nd''^  ''""""'•  '^''^♦°" 
the  tria/s  were  PytThZl  "*'"'"     *  '""^  «' 
a  judicial  autoiat'on'Tn' a  Xt '  I^  "?  "°'«'  '^"^ 
decision  according  to  tL  «  '^-    ^^'^  *°  «'^«  «>y 
Many  of  the  c«.2    m-ot  ,^"*^'"«^    '^  »'»«  J"/ 
vaiue  that  it  ^o,Z ZtythJT''',  f  -  ''ttle 
sioned  lawyers  employed  ?J  S,n  ?  ■?'  ''""  *''"P"- 
«d  these  cases  draZd  al     T'T  """*'"'">= 
J'ke  a  man  tied  to  a  chair  "T        *^T'  ""  ^  f«" 
forever  to  "a  ta'e  "old  hv ?    ■^■"P*""'^  *°  '^t^n 
and  fury,  signifyin^tth'^"  "'''''  ^""  »'  --d 

'hi  oXt"arrt;'?/\^''"''  -•-    'd  Judge 

iistened^o'^^JLecita  ofir  r"'  "'"'  "'^'^''  ^^ 
-re  arraigned  So!:!  ^^  ^^-a^;^  tragedies  that 

•nortahty  and  as  indifferenTas  fate    T  ''T  ''''°"* 
now.  that  it  was  probablv  h  ^  understood, 

young,  as  the  judL  of  „  ^         ""'^  ^^  ^^'^  hegun 
^'owl^oredtrdtl^ItLT''  ""'''  ""'  ^Sn 
».  for  d^ftolTo^fV'-  '  '-'  "-^  ««t- 
»>«'  "ghtl/  it  co;ce™e^th?""~u'f  '  '•^"-^^ 
°>nsty   old   mortgaged   Ln,>  ""^""T^'P  °'  ^"'"e 
stored  in  a  warehouse  InH       '   '^'  '"^'^    ''-^ 
mortgagee  on   thtlVg^  "r^^dlri?  '^  ''' 
houseman  on  a  storage  lief  Tv.     7  •'''^  ^'«'«- 
trict  Attorney  interrunW Ti,~        ^^^i^taut  Dis. 

'ne  if  I  would  n     Zose  o/aT"''"^  *°  -^^ 
uispose  of  a  larceny  case  that 


If; 


80 


THE  BEAST 


Hi  i 


lit 


would  not  take  two  minutes.  I  was  willing.  He 
brought  in  a  boy,  whom  I  shall  call  "Tony  Cos- 
tello,"*  and  arraigned  him  before  the  court.  The 
Clerk  read  the  indictment;  a  railroad  detective 
gave  his  testimony;  the  boy  was  accused  of  steal- 
ing coal  from  the  tracks,  and  he  had  no  defence. 
Frightened  and  silent,  he  stood  looking  from  me 
to  the  jury,  from  the  jury  to  the  attorney,  and  from 
the  attorney  back  to  me  —  big-eyed  and  trembling 
—  a  helpless  infant,  trying  to  follow  in  our  faces 
what  was  going  on.  The  case  was  clear.  There 
was  nothing  for  me  to  do  under  the  law  but  to 
find  him  guilty  and  sentence  him  to  a  term  in  the 
State  Reform  School.  I  did  it  —  and  prepared 
to  go  back  to  the  affair  of  the  second-hand  fur- 
niture. 

There  had  been  sitting  at  the  back  of  the  court- 
room an  old  woman  with  a  shawl  on  her  head, 
huddled  up  like  a  squaw,  wooden-faced,  and 
incredibly  wrinkled.  She  waddled  down  the  aisle 
toward  the  bench,  while  papers  of  commitment 
were  being  made  out  against  the  boy,  and  began 
to  talk  to  the  court  interpreter  in  an  excited  gabble 
which  I  did  not  understand.  I  signed  to  the  coun- 
.'jpI  for  the  warehouseman  to  proceed  with  his 
Ci.  ,;  he  rose  —  and  he  was  greeted  with  the  most 
soul-piercing  scream  of  agony  that  I  ever  heard 

This  name,  and  those  of  all  other  chfldren  brought  before  the  court, 
are  disguised  in  order  to  protect  the  families  from  the  consequences  of 
publicity. 


THE  BEAST  IN  THE  COUNTY  COURT  81 

noiy.     bhe   threw   her   hands   im   f„   u       l      . 
grasped  her  poor,  thin  grl^'U    and^pl^He'dt' 

vvnen  tne  baihff  of  the  court  caught  hold  of  her  to 
take  her  from  the  roon>,  she  broke  awly  from  him 

door  I  could  still  hear  her  shriekin/      i.  •  ,  • 
terribi,.     I  adjourned  the  cfur^^tnT  ^^t^^^^^ 
Z  f^'t^'^'ry  -uch  shaken  and^nntveJ 
but  I  st.n  heard  her.  in  the  hall,  wailing  andlt' 

heart  was  being  torn  out  of  her. 
I  did  not  know  what  to  do.    I  thoujrhf  T  l,„j 

requbed  thati  !',>   "^^   ^"^y-    ^he   law 
required  that  I  should  sentence  him.    The  mother 

mjght  .ream  her.elf  dumb,  but  I  was  una'jf  to' 

.,?^\^T^T^  ^"^  ^"e*'^-  Two  reporters 
attracted  by  the  uproar,  came  to  a.k  me  Jl  c^u  j' 
not  do  somethmg  for  her.    I  telephoned  the  Di 

change  my  order  against  the  boy -make  it  a 


82 


THE  BEAST 


fli- 


1   f 


f" 


suspended  sentence  —  and  let  me  look  into  the 
case  myself.  He  was  doubtful  —  as  I  was  — 
about  my  right  to  do  such  a  thing,  but  I  accepted 
the  responsibility  of  the  act  and  he  consented  to 
It.  After  what  seemed  an  hour  to  me  —  during 
which  I  could  still  hear  the  miserable  woman  wail- 
ing —  the  boy  was  returned  to  her  and  she  was 
quieted. 

Then  I  took  the  first  step  toward  the  founding 
of  the  Juvenile  Court  of  Denver.    I  got  an  offi- 
cer who  knew  Tony,  and  I  went  with  him,  at 
night,  to  the  boy's  home  in  the  Italian  quarter  of 
North  Denver.    I  need  not  describe  the  miser- 
able conditions  in  which  I  found  the  Costellos 
living  —  in  two  rooms,  in  a  filthy  shack,  with  the 
father  sick  in  bed.  and  the  whole  family  struggling 
agamst    starvation.     I    talked    with    Tony,    and 
found  him  not  a  criminal,  not  a  bad  boy    but 
merely  a  boy.    He  had  seen  that  his  father  and 
his  mother  and  the  baby  were  suffering  from  cold 
and  he  had  brought  home  fuel  from  the  railroad 
tracks  to  keep  them  warm.    I  gave  him  a  little 
lecture  on  the  necessity  of  obeying  the  laws,  and 
put   him   "on    probation."     The   mother   kissed 
my  hands.     The  neighbours  came  in  to  salute 
me  and  to  rejoice  with  the  Costellos.     I  left  them. 
But  I  carried  away  with  me  what  must  have  been 
something  of  their   view  of   my  court  and   my 
absurd  handling  of  their  boy;  and  I  began  to 
thmk  over  this  business    of    punishing    infants 


THE  BEAST  IN  THE  COUNTY  COURT  83 

i.~vr  p,„j,  J      ""«'" »' "-'  ■»»  !•«.  ..d 

n  „      iL  ''**  same  man 

into  the  barn       if  w      T     '"""S*^"  ^'^  ^°"°^ 
cuuer   naa   my  companions.     But 


I 


'■JM 


84  THE  BEAST 

"burglary"  ?  It  had  been  mere  mischief,  an  adven- 
ture, a  boy's  way  of  plagueing  old  Fay  whom  we 
considered  the  "grouchy"  enemy  of  all  boys. 

"I  don't  think  these  children  should  be  charged 
with  burglary,"  I  said  to  the  Clerk,  rather  shame- 
facedly.    "Bring  them  into  my  chambers." 

They  came,  and  I  confronted  in  their  small  per- 
sons the  innocent  crimes  of  my  own  "kid"  days. 
They  told  me  all  about  their  "  burglary,"  their  feud 
with  Fay  —  whom  two  of  the  boys  accused  of 
having  taken  their  pigeons  — and  their  boyish  in- 
dignation against  him  for  having  called  in  the  cops 
in  the  quarrel.  I  lectured  them— as  self-righteously 
as  I  could  underthecircumstances— and  discharged 
them  on  suspended  sentence,  with  a  warning. 

I  went  to  the  Clerk  of  the  Court,  Mr.  Hubert 
L.  Shattuck.  "This  is  all  wrong,"  I  said.  "It's 
all  nonsense  —  bringing  these  children  in  here  on 
criminal  charges  —  to  be  punished  —  sentenced  to 
prison  —  degraded  for  life!" 

"Well,  Judge,"  he  explained,  "we  sometimes 
get  short  on  our  fee  accounts,  and  it  helps  to 
increase  fees  in  this  office  to  bring  the  kids  here." 
It  did.  The  officers  of  the  court  were  paid  so  much 
for  each  conviction  obtained  by  the  court.  They 
received  no  regular  salaries.  When  they  wished 
to  make  up  arrears  of  pay,  they  rounded  up  a  batch 
of  youngsters  and  "  put  them  through."  The  same 
thing  was  done  in  the  police  court,  th-  ,ourt  of  the 
justice  of  the  peace,  and  the  criminal  court. 


THE  BEAST  IN  THE  COUNTY  COURT  85 

It  was  more  than  absurd,  more  than  wrong     It 

was  an  outrage  against  childhood,  against  society 

against  justice,  decency  and  common  sense     I 

began  to  search  the  statutes  for  the  laws  inthe 

matter   to  frequent  the  jails  in  order  to  see  how 

the  children  were  treated  there,  to  compile  stat- 

stics  of  the  cost  to  the  county  of  these  trials  and 

the  cost  to  society  of  this  way  of  making  criminals 

of  little  children.    And  the  deeper  I  went  into 

the  matter,  the  more  astounded  I  became 

Jhl't^  ^7'  ".'''*  "'y  J*"'  '""  «=«""  reeking 
with  filth  and  crawlmg  with  vermin,  waiting  trial 
for  some  such  infantile  offences  as  these  I  have 
described.  I  found  boys  in  the  county  jail  locked 
up  with  men  of  the  vilest  immorality,  listening  to 
obscene  stories,  subject  U  the  most  degrading 
personal  mdignities.  and  takbg  lessons  in  a  high 
school  of  vice  with  all  the  receptive  eagerness  of 

almost  confirmed  m  viciousness.  had  begun  their 
careers  as  Tony  Costello  had.  or  these  burglars 
of  the  pigeon  roost.  And  I  found  that  many  of 
^e  hardened  criminals  were  merely  the  perfect 
graduates  of  the  system  of  which  I  had  been  a  sort 
of  proud  superintendent. 

It  kept  me  awake  at  night.     It  possessed  me 

with  a  remorseful  horror.    I  went  about  talking. 

agitatmg,     mvestigating.   pestering  the  jailer!. 

spendmg  my  Sundays  in  the  cells  among  the  crimi 

inals.  trymg  to  draft  reform  laws  and  in  every 


T 

i,l! 


II ! 


M  THE  BEAST 

way  making  myself  a  nuisance  to  everybody     I 
put  into  this  work  all  the  balked  enthusiasm  that 
my  unsuccessful  legislative  reforms  had  left  me 
I  could  help  the  children,  if  I  could  not  help  the 
grown-ups." 

Some  of  these  "grown-ups,"  whom  my  activi- 
ties  annoyed,  began  to  say  I  was  "crazy."  Our 
family  physician  came,  on  that  report,  to  remon- 
-.trate  with  me.  A  relative,  very  much  alarmed, 
asked  me  to  be  careful  of  myself,  not  to  "overdo  " 
And  I  felt  as  if  I  were  standing  before  a  burnine 
buildmg.  with  children  crying  for  help  in  the 
flames  at  the  upper  windows,  while  my  friends 
remonstrated:  "Be  calm.  Don't  excite  yourself 
so.     People  will  thmk  you're  not  sane!" 

Not  sane?    Well  it  depends  on  what  you  con- 
sider     sane."    One  very  sane  thing  to  do  would 
have  been  to  turn  my  back  on  the  fire  and  the 
children  perishing  in  it,  blame  the  inefficiency  of 
" w  n    ?fP*'"'™«°''  sJiJ^g  a  shoulder  as  if  to  say: 
Well,  It  s  none  of  my  business,"  and  go  home 
to  my  dinner.     I  know  that  sort  of  sanity.     I 
have  seen  it,  many  times,  myself.     But  in  the 
transports  of  my  so-called  insanity  I  found  a  sec- 
tion of  the  Colorado  school  law  of  April  12,  1899 
by  means  of  which  I  could  get  a  ladder 'up  to 
those  doomed  children.     And  this  was  it: 

„„r®»''*?  \  f^'^'y  ^^""^  ...  who  does 
not  attend  school  ...  or  who  is  in  atterd- 
ance  at  any  school  and  is  vicious,  incorrigible  or 


THE  BEAST  IN  THE  COUNTY  COURT  87 

wanders  about  the  streels-'in  the  nighT  Ume  ^ 

tsuhLfr^h  "  ^"^'^*''  disorderly  person  and 
De  subject  to  the  provisions  of  this  actf"' 

l„"hi"''^"-l'!J'°''^!''y  P^"'""'  Not  a  criminal 
to  be  pumshed  under  the  criminal  law.  but  a 
ward  of  the  state,  to  be  corrected  by  the  state  as 

only  for  the  disciphnmg  of  school  children;  but  it 
could  be  construed  as  I  proceeded  to  conslrue  i 
stah,T  "  *  «tf '  fire^^cape  built  according  to  the 
statutory  regulations.  It  was  merely  a  wooden 
adder  rotting  in  a  back  yard.  But  it  iould  reacS 
the  lower  stones  -  and  I  asked  the  District  Attor- 
ney  m  future  to  file  all  his  complaints  against  chil 

form  which  I  furnished  -  and  he  agreed  to  do  so. 
Thus  our  juvenile  court"  was  begun  informally, 
anonymously,  so  to  speak,  but  effectually.  It  was 
as  far  as  I  knew  the  first  juvenile  court  in  America' 
and  the  simple  beginnmg  of  a  reform  thai  has  since 
gone  round  the  world.* 

n,  ^\nf  "'"  '°  ^^°^^^  '°"^  ^ys'^""  of  handling 
the  ch,,dren.  We  needed,  above  all.  probatiof 
officers;  and  -  proceeding  still  under  the  school 

iuv'S;rrj^rs;SL^:^^r'ut?z"  °'  ?"^"^ '""-"«'  "■'  «- 


'I; 
if 


m  fi 


til) 


t  ! 


E     I 


88  THE  BEAST 

law  -I  went  to  all  the  school  boards,  askbg  for 
the  appomtment  of  truant  oflScers  whom  I  could 
use  in  the  court.    I  addressed  meetings  of  school- 
teachers, harangued  women's  clubs,  Christian  asso- 
ciations, charitable  societies  and  church  meetbes 
bormg  people  with  "the  problem  of  the  children"' 
wherever  I  could  get  leave  to  speak.    All  this 
slowly  aroused  a  public  enthusiasm  that  was  to 
become  in  time  very  powerful;  it  attracted  atten- 
tion to  the  court  and  helped  me  with  the  parents 
of  demquent  children.    It  brought  in  subscrip- 
lions  from  public-spirited  men  and  women  to  help 
on  the    good  work."    It  prepared  for  the  passag^ 
of  the  necessary  laws  which  I  was  drafting  for  the 
next  session  of  the  Legislature.    And  it  led  me 
finally,  as  you  shall  see.  into  another  collision  with 
tiie  Beast. 

Meanwhile,  however,  a  more  imminent  collision 
was  impending. 

A  reform  movement  had  been  started  in  Den- 
ver agamst  the  liquor  "dives."  or  "wine  rooms." 
as  they  were  called.    There  was  a  law  on  the  stat- 
ute books  forbiddmg  saloons  to  serve  liquor  to 
women,  but  a  great  part  of  the  trade  of  the  dives 
was  done  with  prostitutes,  and  all  the  places  were 
fitted  up  with  "cribs"  and  "private  rooms"  where 
young  girls  could  be  drugged  and  ruined  and  the 
white-slave     traffic  promoted.    The  wine-room 
keepers  were  backed,  of  course,  by  the  political 
power  of  the  brewers,  and  the  inmates  were  used 


THE  BEAST  IN  THE  COUNTY  COURT  89 

aiabsllh.'"  •      '   ^^^"^  ^^^  '^^°™   movement 
against  the    wine-room  evl"  becam..  ««  ^o„ 

ously  strong  that  the  membersSThe  F.t  Sd 

t^  e'l  "It  '''''  '^^y  -""'-i   either   have 
to  enforce  the  law   or  involve  the   n»n,„«    •• 

ffi^r  r r  '^^  ''^'•''  ^  ^- 'L^erameJ 
Cronm  was  put  forward  in  an  appeal  to  the  court 

;  M^ntmVrh''^  p-'r-  «^  ^-  ^'^""e3 

oy  Miiton  Simth.  who  was  chairman  of  our  Demo- 
c^t^'nf"''  ^r'™'  Committee.  From  I  pr"se 
h^  ,.»V/°''''  ""agistrate's  court.  Cronirwas 
brought  before  District  Judge  Pete  L.  Palmer 
whose  record  needs  no  remaric.  And  Judge  Pat 
mer  promptly  granted  an  injunction  restfaininl 
he  magistrate  and  the  Fire  and    Pol  ce   b3 

bron'Tnel"'-  '^'°"^"  -^--'^^'•g's  dS 
roL^  "  "*"'  argument  that  the  "wine- 
room  law  '  was  an  infringement  of  the  conSn 

lonal  rights  of  women.     Ihe  ministers  who  cen-" 

with  threats  of  fines  for  contempt  of  court.  Cronin 
ZT  ^*^i!^^'«  dive;  the  Fire  and  Police  Board 
was  rescued  from  an  awkward  position-  ani  ?he 

how  man^Tf'r^  "  '^'  '^'''  ''^^^^^  I  had  seen 
how  many  of  the  young  girls  brought  before  me 
had  been  ruined  m  wine  rooms.    I  hid  jurisdiction 


•  it 


i  \ 


i 


1, 


s 
'a 


^  THE  BEAST 

in  the  case  because  my  court  was  the  court  of 

leTn  Z  '^"  "^r '«"«•«  '^ourt  in  which  the 
test  proceedings  against  Cronin  had  been  begun. 
And  I  went  out  of  my  way  to  bring  some  frieSly 

gel  him  to  file  an  appeal  in  my  court. 

He  did  it;  and  before  the  case  was  called  I  was 
visited  m  my  chambers  by  another  member  of  I" 
Democratic  County  Executive  Committee,  who 
was  also  an  agent  for  the  brewers'  trust.  He 
w»hed  to  speak  to  me  about  the  Cronin  matter. 
You  know  Judge."  he  said,  "there's  a  liberal 
element  m  this  town  that  controls  about  10.000 

ne  r'th     ;\"^r'  ''""  '"  ''•'^  ^-"—  bus" 
JanMn^    ..>?''  T  "'"^  '^'  Republicans  this 
fall,  and  well  lose  the  elections.     I  know  you're 
a  good  Democrat  the  same  as  I  am.  and  I  know 
you  don  t  want  to  put  the  party  in  a  hole.     I'm 
faterested  m  ycu.     I  want  to  see  you  succeed.     I 
want  to  see  you  renominated  and  reelected,  and 
I  know  yoM  can't  do  it  with  this  liberal  element 
agamst  you      Can  you?     Well.  now.  Judge  pll! 
mer  has  fixed  th.s  Cronin  case  all  right.     You  can 
W  .t  with  him.  as  it  stands,  and  no  on""; 
say  a  word  agamst  you.     It's  up  to  him.     If  there's 
any  kick  from  the  church  people,  it's  coming  to 
him.     Let  ;itm  take  it."    And  so  on.     It  was  the 
frame  ancient  mixture  of  smiles  and  threats,  of 
promised  favours  -f  I  "played  the  game."  and  of 
political  destruction  prophesied   if  I  refused.     I 


THE  BEAST  IN  THE  COUNTY  COURT  »1 

my  poi  tical  welfare,  and  got  rid  of  him. 

The  law  in  the  Cronin  case  was    .enr      a 
-unity.  ,„d,,  ,3  power  .haTthe  r^h't 

was  an  exercise  of  the  police  power     I  so  hpM  ' 

0?rh?^n^;i7£rwrt5^erX"c^^^^^^^^ 
="^:^^'^r^el?dS 

"rd  .•  on  Tw " ''  rr ^'  -'^^  '^^"-^ 

«"/  aecision.     It  was  as   if  he  said:     "Whv    T 
thought  this  was  only  a  stall!     Where's  you^p'ul 
w  h  th,s  court?    What  sort  of  mess  arT  S 
fellows  trying  to  get  me  into  ?"  ^°" 

to?e"JSt"Zie''^"?^ut^^^^^^^^^ 
politicians  told  me      "If  ;„„  5      '«/°°e."  the 
^ion.  you...  he  s^rLhedV^rScS  ^^^a- 

era!  element.     Sure  as  shooting!"         ''^  ""^  "'" 


M  THE  BEAST 

of  the  Beast,  and  I  went  back  to  my  work  for 
the  children  so  as  to  establish  at  least  a  precedent 
or  procedure  for  my  successor  to  follow.    But  that 
work,  and  my  decision  in  the  Cronin  case,  had 
brought  me  to  the  notice  of  the  "troublesome 
church  element.'     It  would  have  been  poor  poli- 
lies  to  stand  against  the  sweep  of  the  reform  wave 
in  an  attempt  to  prevent  my  renomination.    So  I 
was  allowed  a  place  on  the  Democratic  ticket 
agam.  and  the  System  prepared  quietly  to  "knife" 
me  and  elect  my  Republican  opponent. 
^^  At  that  time  I  was  squeamish  about  iudites 
p  aymg  politics.'  and  I  decided  that  I  should 
make  no  speeches  and  take  no  active  part  in  the 
campaign.    I  had  been  assessed  $1,000  by  the 
finance  committee  as  my  contribution  to  the  cam- 
paigti  fund,  and  an  officer  of  the  First  National 
Bank  of  Denver  (in  which  the  court  funds  were 
deposited)  offered  to  pay  the  assessment  for  mt 
I  was  no  longer  as  innocent  as  I  had  been  in  the 
days  of  Gardener's  first  nomination,  and  I  refused 
the  offer  and  paid  the  money  fro.j  my  own  purse. 
But  It  took  all  I  had;  I  had  nothing  lelt  even  to 
pay  for  the  printmg  of  a  circular  letter  to  the  elec- 
torate, and  I  allowed  some  lawyer  friends  to  pay 
for  that  publication  —  a  mistake  which  I  have 
never  made  since. 

As  election  day  approached  it  bt-iame  appar- 
ent  to  every  politician  that  I  was  hopelessly  "out 
of  the  running."    My  Republican  opponent  was 


THE  BEAST  IN  THE  COUNTY  COUIIT  93 

»e»  openly  «o,ki„g  !?„«  ^t     u".  '    H""' 

ov"  .he  .«„.,„„  „,„,,,'■? ti*r  r..'TS 
no.  He  .h.do«.  of  .  eh.„eei  and  I  „.„.  ,'  f.!; 

5»ij.  »j,ee,™  M,h>.  „,,k„,  „,r,:^',r;,:; 

L  .he?"'  ''5?  ".""''">'■•  "»  -".S  !,:?„: 
ZZ  T"   J"? "!■  ™"8  "">  hon,c./„„„ 

-eXrSLtrr-tri 


^*  THE  BEAST 

of  renewed  faith  in  the  people,  the  first  sign  of  an 

aroused  pubhc  opinion   on  which  I  might  rely 

he  resurrection  call  to  all  my  dead  hopes  of 
reform^  It  was  as  if  there  had  come-Lt  of 
blind  darkness -with  the  flash  of  a  stroke  of 
hghtn.ng-the  fuH  day!    The  people  were  with 

ZJt  ^5"""°  '^'.  ^'°^^''  ^^P"*^^^".  the  paper 
that  had  opposed  me,  later  conceded  that  "Lind- 
sey  was  honestly  elected"  -  "o„e  officer  who  did 
not  owe  his  advancement  to  illegal  votes" - 
endorsed  by  "honest  Democratic  and  Republi- 

as  a  boy  gulps  his  emotion,  with  a  pain  in  the 

Jr?'    ^''^J  broken, the  System.    I  had  sent 

its  1  '"^^^^'t^'' limping,  with  its  tail  between 

(Or  rather.  I  thought  I  had.)  As  I  walked 
down  to  my  court  that  morning,  the  streets  looked 
cleaner,  the  air  seemed  purer,  life  seemed  more 

for  me  and  thousands  of  good  citizens  were  wait- 
ing to  help  me  with  it. 


CHAPTER  vr 

THE  BEiOT  mo  THE  CBIU>»EN 

itate°tn",'7"»^^'*'  -P'-'^^'-n.  but    avid 

.s  no  here  ^^  ^^  .^^^  ^P^  cTetSs  oTou'"s Lig^: 

ne  collection  of  fees  tor  prosecuting  children, 
w 


^^  THE  BEAST 

Above  all   we  needed   "contributory  juvenile 
delinquency"  laws  so  that  we  might  be  able  to 
prosecute  parents  for  neglecting  their  children, 
and  dive  keepers,  gamblers  and  such  for  tempting 
and  seducmg  children;  we  needed  laws  establish- 
ing a  juvenile  court  to  which  all  children  should 
be  brought,  mstead  of  having  them  arraigned  in 
the  magistrate's  court,  the  county  court  or  the 
criminal  court,  haphazard;  we  had  to  obtam.  for 
this  juvenile  court,  probation  officers  with  police 
powers  s„  that  we  might  arrest  the  wine-room 
keepers  and  such,  whom  the  police,  for  political 
reasons,  were  protecting;  we  needed  a  detention 
school,  so  that  children  might  no  longer  be  put  in 
jail;  we  had  to  strengthen  the  child-labour  law 
and  the  compulsory  school  law;  we  needed  trade 
schools,   public  playgrounds   and    public    baths. 
But  the  Legislature  was  not  to  meet  for  twelve 
months   and  I  knew  that  before  we  could  obtain 
any  of  these  laws  we  must  arouse  a  public  demand 
for  them      My  work  during  1902  was  all  schemed 
out    o  that  end.     And  since  the  evils  that  we 
attacked  are  common  to  all  our  American  cities. 
I  wish  to  give  the  story  of  our  fight  in  some  detail. 
Ihose  politicians  in  Denver  who  love  darkness 
and  gum  shoes  are  never  tired  of  screaming  from 
their  burrows  that  I  am  a  "  grand-stander  "    This 
IS  to  them  an  epithet  of  opprobrium,  you  under- 
stand.    They  apply  it  to  Roosevelt.  La  Follette. 
Folk.  Jerome.  Hughes  and  every  other  politician 


THE  BEAST  AND  THE  CIHLDREN  97 
who  has  raised  the  window  and  shouted  "Bur- 
g  ars!  when  he  heard  the  centre-bit  in  the  night 
It  was  m  the  year  1902  that  I  was  first  branded 
a  grand-stander."  Ineffaceable  stigma!  I  an- 
pealed  to  the  people  to  help  me  obtain  laws  for 
the  people.     I  even  did  that! 

I  appealed  to  them  directly  and  indirectly,  from 
the  platform  whenever  I  could  get  any  of  them 
before  a  platform,  and  through  the  newspapers 
whenever  a  reporter  gave  me  an  interview  or  an 
editor  a.  jwed  me  a  column  for  an  article.  And 
pursumg  the  same  pol.cy  I  even  used  my  place 
ui  the  county  court  to  arouse  public  opinion,  and 
did  It  with  a  sensational"  denunciation  that 
was  flagrant  "grand-standing"  of  the  most  delib- 
erate  sort. 

It  happened  in  this  way:    I  found  on  my  return 
to  the  bench  that  the  law  against  the  wine  rooms 
was  not  bemg  enforced.     I  found  that  the  gambling 
hells  were  all  open.     I  made  the  rounds  of  tL-  m 
at  n,ght,  unrecognized,  and  saw  boys  in  knicker- 
bockers at  tables  evidently  reserved  for  their  use 
I  saw  mdescribable  things  ir     .e  wine  rooms  and 
the  dance  halls  connected  with  them,  where  young 
girls  from  laundries,  factories,  hotels  and  restaur- 
an  s  were  being  debauched.     (For  example,  three 
girls  who  had  been  enticed   into  a   saloon  were 
discovered  next  day  in  the  cellar  of  the  building 
by  a  woman  passing  on  the  street,  who  heard 
their  groans;  they  were  lying  there  stark  naked 


i:.- 


98  THE  BEAST 

horribly  ill  and  praying  for  death;  and  the  police- 
man on  the  beat,  when  he  was  appealed  to,  refused 
to  arrest  the  dive  keeper.) 

Poor  mothers  appealed  to  my  court  to  recover 
from  the  gamblers  the  money  lost  by  their  young 
sons.  Employers  prosecuted,  before  me,  unfor- 
tunate boys  who  had  stolen  to  make  good  their 
losses  at  the  gaming  tables.  Even  the  newsboys 
were  being  encouragad  to  play  "policy"  with 
their  pitiably  small  earnings.  And  when  I  pre- 
sented to  the  Assistant  District  Attorney  the 
evidence  against  the  gamblers  taken  publicly  in 
my  court,  he  confessed  —  confidentially  —  that 
his  chief,  District  Attorney  Lindsley,  would  not 
prosecute,  because  that  was  "the  policy  of  the 
administration." 

^^  I  went  to  the  District  Attorney  and  demanded, 
"Why  don't  you  arrest  the  dive  keepers?"  He 
replied  that  this  was  the  duty  of  the  police  and 
that  the  Police  Loard  refused  to  act.  I  wrote  to 
the  Chief  of  Police  and  he  replied  that  he  had 
given  my  letter  to  the  president  of  the  Board  — 
Mr.  Frank  Adams. 

Mr.  Frank  Adams  was  not  only  president  of 
the  Police  Board;  he  was  president,  also,  of  the 
ice  trust  that  supplied  brewers,  saloon  keepers 
and  wine-room  men  with  ice.  He  was  a  machine 
politician,  with  two  brothers  in  the  game;  and 
he  played  the  game  "for  all  there  was  in  it." 
My  letter  to  the, Chief  brought  Frank  Adams 


THE  BEAST  AND  THE  CHILDREN     99 

to  my  chambers  to  see  me,  and  I  made  a  personal 
appeal  to  h.m  on  behalf  of  the  children.  Kth  my 
hand  on  h.s  shoulder,  looking  him  in  the  face.  I 
tod  h.m  of  what  I  had  seen,  of  how  the  young 
girls    and    boys    were    being    sacrificed;  and    h! 

rrr!  ;.*°?  ""^^''^  ^'^  P'*""'^^'  tJ'"*  he  would 
see  that  the  laws  were  enforced  and  the  children 
protected.  But  he  did  not  keep  his  word.  iZ 
as  much,  with  my  own  eyes,  in  a  personal  investi- 
gat.on;  and  the  officers  of  my  court  confirmed  . 
I  sent  for  the  Ch.ef  of  Police,  showed  him  affidavits 
furn.hed  by  Mr.  E.  K.  Whitehead,  the  secretary 
of  the  Humane  Socety.  exposing  the  conditions, 
b;dfaHr'''^'^''''^^°''^'^«"^^--'fof 

He  replied:  "You're   right.     Things   are  just 
««  you  say,  out  I'm  not  going  to  be  held  respon 

t  a  ion"''ir";.-'u'  *^  P"'''^^  ''  '"^^  -'J-i^- 
tration.     They  thmk  they  need  the  support  of 

these  people  to  carry  the  next  elections      Your 

kick  must  be  against  the  Board  and  not  against 

frnl!*^  J'^u°"°^'"'f*^*^  ^^  ^''**  I  had  heard 
from  a  d.ve  keeper  whom  I  had  sentenced  in  my 
court  Judge,"  he  had  said,  "I  don't  blame 
you.  but  I  do  blame  that  Police  Board.  ThSr 
man  came  to  me  collecting  for  the  chairman  of 
the  party  committee,  and  I  put  up  $500,  on  the 
promise  that  the  police  wouldn't  interfere  .hh 
my  saloon.    Now  he  says  you're  kicking  up  a  fuss 


t.f 
hi; ' 


100  THE  BEAST 

and  he  can't  protect  me  here."  It  was  corrob- 
orated later  by  Frank  Ada  himself,  when  he 
tried  to  persuade  me  not  to  interfere  judicially 
with  the  Police  Board's  right  to  appoint  licence 
inspectors,  because,  he  said,  "We've  got  to  keep 
these  dive  keepers  in  line."  It  was  the  System 
agam;  the  System  was  making  money  from  the 
debauching  of  young  girls,  and  the  Police  Board 
was  acting  as  toll  keeper  on  this  public  road  to 
prostitution. 

I  wrote  a  note  to  the  members  of  the  Board 
luvitmg  them  to  my  court  one  Saturday  morning, 
m  May,  got  the  newspaper  reporters  to  come,  and 
then  took  my  place  on  the  bench  and  publicly 
accused  the  astonished  commissioners  of  neglect- 
ing their  duties,  of  knowingly  permitting  the  dives 
to  ruin  children,  and  of  being  personally  respon- 
sible for  r  uch  of  the  appalling  immorality  that 
came  before  my  court. 

I  addressed  myself  to  them,  but  it  was  to  the 
public  ear  that  I  was  speaking.  I  described  the 
cases  that  had  come  under  my  own  eyes  and 
named  the  dives  in  which  they  had  originated. 
For  the  public  ear  again,  I  threatened  that  if  the 
Board  did  not  stop  this  traffic  in  the  debauchery 
of  little  children,  I  should  find  means  of  o'otain- 
mg  power  whereby  our  court  could  stop  it.  In 
short,  I  "grand-standed"  —  with  a  megaphone. 

The  newspapers  were  the  megaphone.     They 
printed,  on  the  front  pages,  "scare-head"  accounts 


THE  BEAST  AND  THE  CHILDREN   101 

of  that  scene  in  the  court  room,  with  portraits  of 

the  police  commissioners  and   cartoons  of  them 

sweating    under  the  denunciations  of  the  court 

from  their  pulpits  the  facts  I  haJ  giv,n  and  the 
diarges  I  had  made.  There  was  no  withstand- 
ing the  storm.  The  worst  of  the  dives  put  up 
their  shutters  forthwith,  and  before  they  dared 
oi^n  again  we  had  obtained  from  the  Legislature 
the  contributory  delinquency"  laws  and  the 
police  powers  for  probation  officers  that  put  the 

System  still  has  m  Denver  its  tollgates  for  the 
men  and  women  who  go  "the  primrose  path  to 
the  everlastmg  bonfire."  but  at  least  it  no  longer 
levies  on  the  helpless  boys  and  girls  whom  it  once 
dragged  forcibly  to  physical  and  moral  ruin 

Meanwhile,  we  had  been  carrying  on.  also,  our 
campaign  agamst  the  jail,  with  the  ultimate  pur- 
pose of  obtaining  a   detention   home-school   for 
children.    I   had   found   conditions   in   the  jails 
almost  as  bad  as  they  were  in  the  dives.     Boys 
repeated  to  me  the  obscene  stories  they  had  heard 
there,   from  the  older  prisoners,   and   described 
the  abommable  pollutions  that  had  been  com- 
mitted on  their  little  bodies.    I  learned  from  a 
boy  sixteen  years  old.  a  confirmed  criminal,  that 
he  had  been  first  imprisoned  when  he  was  ten  and 
that  he  had  learned  in  jail  how  to  crack  safes  and 
had  practised  that  art  successfully  when  he  was 


w 


I 


108  THE  BEAST 

fifteen;  he  told  of  it  with  pride,  and  with  an 
admiration  of  the  man  who  had  taught  him.    He 
said  It  was  his  ambition  now  to  kill  a  policeman 
whom  he  hated,  and  he  had  taken  as  his  model 
in  life  a  young  outlaw  named  Harry  Tracy  whose 
exploits  had  been  reported  in  the  newspapers     I 
found  that  the  boys  were  guilty  of  indecent  prac- 
tices among  themselves  and  that,  being  confined 
in  the  matron's  quarters,  they  had  broken  off  the 
plaster  of  the  wall  that  separated  them  from  the 
women's  room;  and  the  girls  there  -  it  is  unmen- 
tionable.    Schoolbqys    they    were.    And    when 
they   were  r    .ased,   they   went   back   to   school, 
with  the  evil  lessons  they  had  learned,  and  taught 
them  to  their  companions,  spreading  the  plague 
and  mfecting  hundreds  of  young  lives  with  the 
deadly  virus  of  a  physical  vice. 

In  addition  to  all  this  I  found  that  some  of  the 
police  were  guilty  of  cruelties  to  the  boys,  used 
language  to  them  that  is  unreportable,  and  uncon- 
sciously taught  the  boys  to  hate  the  law  and  look 
upon  us  all  as  their  enemies.    Several  boys  com- 
plamed  to  me  that  they  had  been  beaten  by  the 
jailer,  and  I  found  on  investigation  that  they  had- 
the  welts  and  bruises  on  their  bodies  showed  it- 
and  prisoners  who  had  seen  them  beaten  testified 
to  It.     One  morning  a  boy,  released  from  iail 
where  he  had  been  1,  ^ked  up  on  a  suspicion  that 
proved  false,  came  running  into  my  chambers  in 
hysterics,  with  the  most  awful  look  of  horror  on 


THE  BEAST  AND  THE  CHILDREN   103 

frightened  shudderings.  the  stor,.  of  how  the  police 

IT^i"^'^  T'"*'^  •■"  '^'^  "l*""  pen."  where 
he  had  been  thrown,  had  spat  upon  hin,  and 
JUj  treated  him.    I  kept  going  to 'the  c"of 
Pohce  ^.th  these  complamts.  and  to  Frank  Adams 
the  president  of  the  Pohce  Board.     And  they  S 

I  was  going  batty"  on  the  "kid  question"  and 
encouraging  the  "little  devils"  to  reL  the  po"e 
Things  went  on  in  this  way  until  our  juvenife 
bills  came  before  the  Legislature,  and  then  he 
opposition  of  the  Police  Board  and  the  Systlm 
came  to  a  head  under  Senator  "Billy"  aSZ 

JoiS'b  "7"m\^'^*™^'  '""^  P-i/ent  ofThe 
Police  Board.  Nothing  was  done  openly.  The 
Board,  of  course,  objected  to  allowi^  our  pro! 
^m  officers  police  powers,  chiefly  Lause'we 

a  reason  for  opposition  could  not  be  acknowl- 
edged. Instead,  the  bills  were  fought  secrX 
m  the  commii^ees  and  kept  from  a  vote  i^  the 

"iZij  tl  •  ^^t'^°  "^^^  I'^fo'e.  on  our 
friendly  newspaper  reporter  named  Harry  Wilbur, 
of  the /ioc^y  Mountain  News,  I  decided  to  "grand- 
rtand     again.     Wilbur  had  been  a  police  court 


«    !■ 


104 


THE  BEAST 


I 

m 


reporter  and  knew  conditions  in  the  jails.  I  gave 
him  an  interview  in  which  I  described  some  of 
the  cases  I  had  seen  and  investigated,  and  I  gave 
him  a  free  hand  to  add  any  other  "horrible  an' 
revoltin'  details"  that  he  knew  to  be  true. 

The  result  waa  an  article  that  took  even  my 
breath  away  when  I  read  it  next  day  on  the  front 
page  of  the  newspaper.  It  was  the  talk  of  the 
town.  It  was  certainly  the  talk  of  the  Police 
Board;  and  Mr.  Frank  Adams  talked  to  the 
reporters  in  a  high  voice,  indi.screetly.  He  de- 
clared that  the  boys  were  liars,  that  I  was  "crazy," 
and  that  conditions  in  the  jails  were  as  good  as 
they  could  be.  This  reply  was  exactly  what  we 
wished.  I  demanded  an  investigation.  The 
Board  professed  to  be  willing,  but  set  no  date. 
We  promptly  set  one  for  them  —  the  following 
Thursday  at  two  o'clock  in  my  chambers  at  the 
Court  House  —  and  I  invited  to  the  hearing 
Governor  Peabody,  Mayor  Wright,  fifteen  pr.  li- 
nent  ministers  in  the  city,  the  Police  Board  aud 
dome  members  of  the  City  Council. 

On  Thursday  morning  —  to  my  horror  —  I 
learned  from  a  friendly  Deputy  Sheriff  that  the 
subpoenas  I  had  ordered  sent  to  a  number  of 
boys  whom  I  knew  as  jail  victims  had  not  been 
served.  I  had  no  witnesses.  And  in  three  hours 
the  hearing  was  to  begin.  I  appealed  to  the 
Deputy  Sheriff  to  help  me.  He  admitted  that 
he  could  not  get  the  boys  in  less  than  two  days. 


THE  BEAST  AND  THE  CHILDREN   105 

"Well  then,"  I  said,  "for  heaven's  sake,  get  me 
Mickey." 

And  Mickey?  Well,  Mickey  was  known  to 
fame  as  "the  worst  kid  in  town."  As  such,  his 
portrait  had  been  printed  in  the  newspapers  — 
posed  with  his  shine-box  over  his  shoulder,  a 
cigarette  in  the  corner  of  his  grin,  his  thumbs 
under  his  suspenders  at  the  shoulders,  his  feet 
crossed  in  an  attitude  of  nonchalant  youthful 
deviltry.  He  had  been  brought  before  me  more 
than  once  on  charges  of  truancy,  and  I  hud  been 
using  him  in  an  attempt  to  organize  a  newsboys' 
association  under  the  supervision  of  the  court. 
Moreover,  he  had  been  one  of  the  boys  who  had 
been  beaten  by  the  jailer,  and  I  knew  he  would 

be  grateful  to  me  for  defending  him. 

It  was  midday  before  the  Sheriff  brought  him 

to  me.    "Mickey,"  I  said,  "I'm  fa  trouble,  and 

you've  got  to  help  me  out  of  it.    You  know  I 

helped  you." 

"Betcher  life  yuh  did.  Judge,"  he  said.     "I'm 

wit' yuh.     W'at  d' yuh  want?" 

I  told  him  what  I   wanted  —  every   boy   that 

he  could  get,  who  had  been  in  jail.     "And  they've 

got  to  be  m  this  room  by  two  o'clock.     Can  you 

do  it?" 

Mickey  tl  ■•-w  out  his  dirty  little  hand.     "Sure 

I  kin.   Don't  yuh  worry,  Judge.     Get  me  a  wheel 

—  dhat's  all." 
I  hurried  oi't  with  him  and  got  him  a  bicycle, 


i 

1 

■  H 

i  -?  .-? 


i  I 


106  THE  BEAST 

and  ho  flew  off  down  Sixteenth  Street  on  it.  hii 
legs  so  short  that  his  feet  could  only  follow  the 
pedals  half  way  round.  I  went  back  to  my 
chambers  to  wait. 

I  trusted  Mick.y.    He  was  the  brightest  street 
gamm    that    our    court    ever    knew.    Once    we 
organized  a  baseball  nine,  with  Mickey  as  cap. 
tain,  in  his  quarter  of  the  town  where  the  Irish 
boys  were  continually  at  war  in  the  streets  with 
the  Jewish  children  of  the  district.     We  gave  them 
uniforms  and  bats  and  balls,  on  condition  that 
they  stop  smoking  cigarettes  and  fighting.    His 
nine  became  the  "champmes"  of  the  town  among 
boys  of  their  age;  and  one  day  m  court  I  con- 
gratulated Mickey  on  his  victories.    "Aw  well. 
Judge,"  he  said,  "yuh  see  it's  dhis  way:  HaK   )' 
dhese  kids  is  Irish  an'  half  o'  dhem  's  Jews.    An* 
yuh  know  when  dh'  Irish  an'  dhe  Jews  get  togedher 
dhey   kin   lick   anyt'ing  dhat   comes   down   dhe 
pike!"    "How  can  that  be,"  I  asked  him,  "when 
there  are  nine  boys  in  a  baseball  team?    There 
must  be   more   of   one   than  the  other."    "No, 
dhere  ain't,  neidher,"  he  said.    "Dhe  pitcher's 
an  Irish  Jew  an'  dhe  best  kid  in  dhe  bunch. 
Come  here.  Greeny."    "Greeny"  was  a  Green- 
stein  and  he  was  red-headed.    If  he  was  not  an 
Irish  Jew  I  don't  know  what  he  could  have  been! 
Anyway,  I  knew  that  if  Mickey  could  not  get 
the  boys  for  me,  no  one  could.    I  waited.    As 
two  o'clock  approached,  the  mbisters  began  to 


THE  BEAST  AND  THE  CHILDREN  107 
come  into  my  room,  one  hy  one,  an<l  lukc  seats 
m  readmess.  Mr.  Wilson  of  tl„.  Pol,"  n  . 
arrived    to    represent    hU    f  ir  ""** 

T»,»  n      »   ™prewnt    his    fellou  -comm.ss  oners 
The  Deputy  Drstrict  Attorney  came,  the  president 

Mayor  Et     "'  °'  ^  ^''^  ^"--^'  ™  "e 

k„  I       1       .      .  ooys!    1  felt  like  a  man  whn 

not  irltti  7:rse  ''"'  ''^"  ^ "'  "■"'  "^  '"^'^ 
.0  begin^  ai^es  wh.  I  LT^  rlS 
patter  of  small  feet  on  the  stairs  and  the  shuffle 
and  crowding  of  Mickey's  cohorts  outJide  n  the 
Skey'S"'-"*'^^^-'-     ••'^-•e-.Judg? 

I  fhir  ht  V  rrut'  ^^  "'Tr  "-f^- 

relief     "I  i„|.  ,.1.       fMuWop.  .pcrehlcau  „,th 

he  t™ii    ^^ '"'  "•»'  '•y  y"-  '■-'^r 

.„~  .1  ^'"urseives.     1  want  you  to  tell 

scared.     Ihey  re  your  friends  the  same  as  I  am 


108 


THE  BEAST 


The  cops  say  you've  been  lying  to  me  about  the 
way  things  are  down  in  the  jails  there,  and  I  want 
you  to  tell  the  truth.  Nothing  but  the  truth,  now. 
Mickey,  you  pick  them  out  and  send  them  in  one 
by  one  —  your  best  witnesses  first." 

I  went  back  to  my  chambers.  "Gentlemen," 
I  said,  "we're  ready." 

I  sat  down  at  the  big  table  with  the  Governor 
at  my  right,  the  Mayor  at  my  left  and  the  president 
of  the  Board  of  Supervisors  and  Police  Com- 
missioner Wilson  at  either  end  of  the  table.  The 
ministers  seated  themselves  in  the  chairs  about 
the  room.  (We  allowed  no  newspaper  reporters 
in,  because  I  knew  what  sort  of  vile  and  unprint- 
able testimony  was  coming.)  Mickey  sent  in  his 
first  witness. 

One  by  one,  as  the  boys  came,  I  impressed  upon 
them  the  necessity  of  telling  the  truth,  encouraged 
them  to  talk,  and  tried  to  put  them  at  their  ease. 
I  started  each  by  asking  him  how  often  he  had 
been  in  jail,  what  he  had  seen  there,  and  so 
forth.  Then  I  sat  back  and  let  him  tell  his 
story. 

And  the  things  they  told  would  raise  your  hair. 
I  saw  the  blushes  rise  to  the  foreheads  of  some 
of  the  ministers  at  the  first  details.  As  we  went 
on,  the  perspiration  stood  on  their  faces.  Some 
sat  pale,  staring  appalled  at  these  freckled  young- 
sters from  whose  little  lips,  in  a  sort  of  infantile 
eagerness  to  tell  all  they  knew,  there  came  stories 


THE  BEAST  AND  THE  CHILDREN   109 

of  bestiality  that  were  th  -  more  horrible  because 
they   were   so   innoc  vt!y,    so   !  oldly,   given.    It 
was  enough  to  mak     n   man  veep;  and  indeed 
tears  of  compassionaie  ;!:ariie  c.'.me  to  the  eyes  of 
more  than  one  father  there,  as  he  listened.     One 
boy  broke  down  and  cried  when  he  told  of  the 
vile  indecencies  that  had  been  committed  upon 
him  by  the  older  criminals;  and  I  saw  the  muscles 
working  in   the  clenched  jaws   of  some  of  our 
"mvestigating  committee"— saw  them  swallow- 
ing the  lump  in  the  throat  —  saw  them  looking 
down   at   the   floor   blinkingly,   afraid   of  losing 
their    self-control.      The    Police    Commissioner 
made  the   mistake  of  cross-examining  the  first 
boy,  but  the  frank  answers  he  got  only  exposed 
worse  matters.     The  boys  came  and  came,  till 
at  last,  a  Catholic  priest.  Father  O'Ryan,  cried 
out:  "My  God!    I  have  had  enough!"     Governor 
Peabody   said   hoarsely:    "I   never   knew  there 
was  such  immorality  in  the  world!"    Some  one 
else   put  in,  "It's  awful  —  awful!"   in  a  half 
groan. 

"Gentlemen."  I  said,  "there  have  been  over 
two  thousand  Denver  boys  put  through  those 
jails  and  those  conditions,  in  the  last  five  years. 
Do  you  think  it  should  go  on  any  longer?" 

Governor  Peabody  rose.  "No."  he  said;  "no. 
Never  in  my  life  have  I  heard  of  so  much  rot  — 
corruption  —  vileness  —  as  I've  heard  to-day  from 
the  mouths  of  these  babies.    I  want  to  tell  you 


no  THE  BEAST 

that  nothing  I  can  do  in  my  administration  can 
be  of  more  importance  —  nothing  I  can  do  will  I 
do  more  gladly  than  sign  those  bills  that  Judge 
Lindsey  is  trying  to  get  through  the  Legislature 
to  do  away  with  these  terrible  conditions.  And 
if,"  he  said,  turning  to  the  Police  Commissioner, 
"Judge  Lindsey  is  'crazy'  I  want  my  name 
written  under  his,  among  the  crazy  people.  And 
if  any  one  says  these  boys  are  'liars,'  that  man  is 
a  liar  himself!" 

Phew!  The  "committee  of  investigation"  dis- 
solved, the  boys  trooped  away  noisily,  and  the 
mmisters  went  back  to  their  pulpits  to  voice  the 
horror  that  had  kept  them  silent  in  my  small 
chamber  of  horrors  for  two  hours.  Their  ser- 
mons went  into  the  newspapers  under  large  black 
headlines;  and  by  the  end  of  the  next  week  our 
juvenile  court  bills  were  passed  by  the  Legislature 
and  made  law  in  Colorado. 

While  public  indignation  was  still  steaming 
we  got  a  grant  from  the  City  Council  for  our 
Detention  School,  and  then  we  followed  up  with 
a  demand  for  public  playgrounds  and  public 
baths.  Neither  came  easily.  It  took  us  two 
years  of  almost  continuous  "agitation"  in  the 
newspapers,  at  council  and  committee  meetings 
and  from  the  public  platform.  We  had  to  found 
a  juvenile  improvement  association,  collect  sta- 
tistics pertinent  to  the  matter,  get  estimates  of 
the  probable  cost  of  the  improvements  and  so 


THE  BEAST  AND  THE  CHILDREN  111 
forth.     Mr.  W.  M.  Downing,  a  member  of  the 
Park  Board,  finally  carried  the  day  with  his  asso- 
ciates and  got  a  grant  for  the  playgrounds,  but 
the  public  bath  was  still  lacking.     For  a  time 
the  Board  of  County  Commissioners  allowed  us 
to  fit  up  a  sort  of  bathhouse  for  court  children 
in  the  basement  of  the  Court  Building,  but  this 
aid  was  withdrawn  when  I  antagonized  the  Board 
in  another  matter.     Finally  I  turned  the  Court 
House  fountains  over  to  the  street  gamin  —  on 
condition    that    they    wore    swimming   trunks  — 
and  protected  them  when  they  ran,  dripping,  into 
my  court  room  from  the  pursuit  of  the  indignant 
cops.       It  seemed  to  me  that  if  the  citizens  of 
Denver  could  affo- '   ^  perpetual  show.r  bath  to 
a  few  bronze  pain:    '     ■  erubs  in  a  fountain,  they 
could  afford  it  to  th.se  more  sensitive  and  grat^ 
ful  cherubs  of  flesh  and  blood,  who  were  coated 
with  dust  and  dirt.     The  council  finally  saw  the 
matter  from  the  same  point  of  view,  and  the  free 
baths  were  established. 

Do  I  boast  ?  By  no  means  —  although  here  is 
the  only  opportunity  I  shall  have  to  boast  through- 
out this  story  of  the  war  with  the  Beast.  I  do 
not  feel  like  boasting;  for  while  we  were  winning 
m  the  fight  for  the  children,  I  struck  the  trail  of 
the  Beast  in  a  wholly  unexpected  quarter,  fol- 
lowed it  up  blindly  and  stumbled  into  a  struggle 
that  showed  me  for  the  first  time  how  the  brute 
could  defend  itself.    It  had  been  merely  dodging 


fif, 


112 


THE  BEAST 


me  and  growling  at  me  heretofore.  Now  it  fell 
upon  me  tooth  and  claw;  and  the  fact  that  I  have 
any  public  life  or  reputation  left  to  me  at  all  is 
due  to  the  lucky  chance  that  is  only  short  of  being 
a  miracle. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE    BEAST,    GRAFT   AND    BUSINESS 

/^NE  Saturday  morning  in  the  early  part  of 
V_/  May,  1902 -while  we  were  still  in  the 
midst  of  our  fight  against  the  wine  rooms  and 
agamst  the  jail  - 1  saw  a  package  of  ledger  sheets 
lymg  on  a  chair  b  the  office  of  Mr  Thos  L 
Bonfils,  who  was  then  Clerk  of  my  court,  and 
on  top  of  the  package  there  was  a  bill.  I  picked 
It  up  absent-mindedly.  It  was  from  the  Smith- 
Brooks  Prmting  Company,  who  held  the  county 
contract  for  such  supplies.  It  read:  "To  1,000 
sheets  of  paper,  $280." 

Twenty-eight  cents  a  sheet! 

"What.'"  I  asked  the  Clerk.  "Are  we  paying 
twenty-eight  cents  a  sheet  for  ledger  paper?" 

He  replied:  "I  don't  know.  The  bills  never 
come  here.  They  go  to  the  Commissioners.  That 
one  must  have  been  left  by  mistake." 

"Well,"  I  said,  puzzled,  "it  seems  funny! 
Iwenty-eight  cents  a  sheet.  Go  down  to  Smith- 
Brooks  for  me  and  ask  if  this  bill's  right." 

Court  had  adjourned.  I  went  into  my  cham- 
bers and  took  up  my  work  there  —  until  the  Clerk 
came  back  from  Smith-Brooks  with  the  explana- 

113 


114 


THE  BEAST 


tion  that  the  bill  should  have  been  delivered  to  the 
Clerk  of  the  Board  of  County  Commissioners.  To 
my  inquiry  about  the  correctness  of  the  price 
charged,  they  returned  the  courteous  reply: 
"That's  none  of  your  business!" 

It  seemed  to  me  that  since  the  bill  was  charged 
again;  t  our  court,  it  was  somewhat  our  business, 
and  I  felt  a  desire  to  know  how  many  bills  of 
this  sort  we  were  being  charged  with.  I  sent  a 
highly  disingenuous  message  to  the  Clerk  of  the 
County  Board,  telling  him  that  I  thought  he  was 
mixing  up  our  accounts  with  those  of  some  other 
court,  and  charging  us  with  supplies  that  we 
had  not  received;  and  I  asked  him  to  send  us 
our  bills,  to  let  us  see  them.  At  five  o'clock 
that  afternoon  I  received  a  large  bundle  of  them. 
One  hasty  glance  showed  me  what  I  had  stumbled 
upon. 

Graft!  Petty  graft!  And  not  so  very  petty, 
either.  We  were  being  charged  $6  each  for  letter 
files  that,  I  knew,  were  not  worth  more  than  forty 
cents.  Letter  paper  furnished  for  my  use  was 
costing  the  county  $36  a  thousand  sheets  and  I 
was  sure  that  it  was  not  worth  more  than  $4  a 
thousand.  On  every  item  in  those  bills  the  county 
was  being  charged  from  ten  to  twenty  times  the 
ordinary  market  price  of  the  goods.  I  could 
scarcely  believe  my  eyes.  I  did  not  believe  them 
until  I  had  called  into  my  chambers  a  wholesale 
printer  whom  I  knew;  and  he  confirmed  my  sus- 


THE  BEAST.  GRAFT  AND  BUSINESS  115 
picions,  reluctantly,  and  only  after  I  had  prom- 
ised  not  to  involve  him  in  the  affair. 

I  was  now  convinced  that  the  county  was  being 
robbed,  but  I  was  not  convinced  that  the  Com- 
missioners were  aware  of  the  robbery.  So,  that 
afternoon,  I  wrote  a  letter  to  the  chairman  of  the 
Board  asking  him  whether  the  Commissioners 
knew  what  was  being  paid  for  these  supplies,  and 
what  should  have  been  paid  for  them.  I  received 
no  answer.  I  waited,  hoping  to  hear  ultimately 
that  durmg  his  silence  he  had  been  honestly  look- 
ing into  the  matter.  I  waited  ten  days.  Then 
I  wrote  again,  telling  him  what  I  had  discovered 
and  asking  him  what  it  meant. 

This  brought  Mr.  Fred  Watts,  a  member  of  the 
Board,  to  ask  my  stenographer:  "What  the  devil's 
the  matter  with  Ben  ?    Hasn't  he  got  any  grati- 
tude?   Ask  him  what  the  hell   he  means."    It 
brought  also  a  number  of  political  friends  with 
the  same  question.     One  of  them  said:  "Judge 
those  fellows  may  be  guilty,  and  I  believe  they 
are,  but  it's  not  your  place  to  show  them  up.   You 
were  appointed  to  your  office  by  these  men  origin- 
ally, and  you  ought  to  stand  by  your  friends."     I 
went  to  a  fellow-judge  and  told  him  what  I  had 
discovered.     He  replied:  "I  don't  want  to  know 
about  It.     I  don't  want  to  be  in  any  way  respon- 
sible.     You  had  better  let  the  whole  thing  alone. 
You  know  what  politics  are  in  this  town.    It's 
the   District   Attorney's   place   to    investigate  — 


116 


THE  BEAST 


not  yours."  I  did  not  believe  that  District  Attor- 
ney Lindsley  would  investigate,  except  under 
pressure,  and  I  asked  this  judge  if  he  would  join 
me  in  demanding  that  Lindsley  should  investi- 
gate. He  replied:  "No,  no.  I'll  have  nothing  to 
do  with  it."  Other  judges  made  similar  replies. 
A  county  official  said:  "Lindsey,  those  men 
appointed  me  to  my  office  here,  and  I  don't  give 

a  d if  they  steal  the  county  blind.     It  will 

ruin  you,  if  you  have  anything  to  do  with  it. 
Keep  out  of  it  if  you  want  to  have  any  future  in 
politics!" 

I  .vent  on  with  my  court  work,  carrying  this 
guilty  secret  in  my  mind;  and  it  was  as  heavy  as 
remorse.  I  kept  coming  back  to  it,  examining 
and  reexamining  the  bills,  and  comparing  them 
with  the  prices  that  I  got  from  other  stationers 
from  time  to  time.  And  the  more  I  thought  of 
it,  the  worse  it  seemed.  Finally  I  wrote  a  per- 
emptory letter  to  the  Commissioners  threaten- 
ing them  that  if  they  did  not  do  something  in 
the  matter  I  should  move  for  an  investigation 
myself. 

My  previous  letters  had  been  merely  polite  raps 
on  a  locked  door.  This  last  one  had  the  effect  of 
threatening  to  burst  in  with  a  sledge  hp,mmer. 
Tom  Phillips,*  the  chairman  of  the  Board,  rushed 
out  of  his  silence  to  assure  mn  of  his  own  inno- 
cence and  accuse  two  other  m       ,ers,  Fred  Watts 

*Phillipa  is  now  bead  of  tht  Straet  Sprinkling  Department  in  Denver. 


THE  BEAST,  GRAFT  AND  BUSINESS  117 
and  Frank  Bishop.     They  promptly  followed  with 
messages  accusing  Phillips  of  grafting  on  bridge 
contracts,  and  demanding  an  investigation    into 
the  bridge  contracts  if  there  was  to  be  one  into  the 
stationery  supplies.    Through  Phillips,  I  got  access 
to  the  county  files,  had  copies  made  of  all   the 
stationery  bills  I  could  find,  and  appointed  an 
investigatmg  committee  on  my  own  responsibility 
to  draw  up  a  report  -a  committee  consisting  of 
a  wholesale  stationer,  a  lawyer,  and  the  Clerk  of 
our  court.    Their  investigation  showed  that  dur- 
ing the  sixteen  months  previous  to  April,   1002 
the  county    on  the  bills  that  we   had    obtained.' 
had  paid  Smith-Brooks  about  $40,000  more  than 
tne  supphes  were  worth. 

What  was   worse,   we  found   that   the  county 
specifications   for   the   contract   were   worded   in 
such  a  way  that  honest  bids  under  them  were 
impossible      For   example.    Smith-Brooks   would 
offer  to  sell  a  26-pag;,  index  for  $12,  and  a  52-pa2e 
index  for  $1.     No  one  could  afford  to  sell  a M 
page  mdex.  as  specified,  for  $1;  and.  of  course, 
none  was  ordered  from  Smith-Brooks  at  that  fig- 
ure     The  county  always  bought  the  smaller  index 
for  twelve  times  the  cost  of  the  larger  one.     But 
If  a  printer  who  did  not  "stand  in"  with  the  Com- 
missioners had  made  such  a  bid.  the  Board  could 
have  put  him  into  bankruptcy.     Paper,  envelopes, 
court  blanks  and  all  other  stationery  supplies  were 
bought  m  the  same  way.    It  was  clearly  a  contract 


lis 


THE  BEAST 


of  disguised  fraud  arranged  and  carried  out  by 
both  Smith-Brooks  and  the  County  board. 

I  give  all  these  tiresome  details,  because  of  what 
followed.  And  the  reason  for  what  followed  was 
at  the  time  not  clear  to  me.  I  was  in  the  jungle 
again  —  a  jungle  of  petty  graft  and  public  robbery, 
assailed  on  all  sides  by  political  animosities,  little 
spites,  threats  and  insults.  And  in  the  tangle  of 
intricate  intrigue,  distracted  by  buffets  from  all 
sides,  in  despo'V  of  honesty  in  a.>y  quarter,  I  could 
no  more  then  -t-  uggle  blindly  ahead,  bewildered 
and  half  dazed. 

In  order  that  what  followed  may  not  be  as 
bewildering  in  the  recital  as  it  was  in  the  fact,  let 
me  explain  that  the  County  Commissioners  were 
valuable  to  the  utility  corporations  in  two  ways: 
they  claimed  and  exercised  power,  under  the  law, 
to  raise  or  lower  assessments,  and  to  equalize  and 
rebate  taxes;  and  they  appointed  the  "judges  of 
elections"  wLo  were  supposed  to  guard  the  ballot 
boxes  from  fraudulent  votes.  They  had  reduced 
the  assessment  of  the  Denver  Union  Water  Com- 
pany from  $1,000,000  to  $300,000  — the  water 
company  whose  property  was  recently  valued  by 
its  own  appraisers  at  $14,400,000.  In  the  years 
1901  and  1902  the  Denver  Union  Water  Company 
and  the  Denver  City  Tramway  Company  had  had 
their  taxes  rebated  nearly  $200,000  by  these  Com- 
missioners whom  I  was  accus.-ig.  By  an  illegal 
legal  proceeding  they  remitted  fines  imposed  by  the 


-<2^ 


m 


THE  BEAST.  GRAFT  AND  BUSINESS  119 
courts  on  dive  keepers  who  were  "in  right"  with 

5662  Taylor  f,  Kclleher,  reported  97  Pacifie.  253.) 
Many  election  judges  whom  they  appointed  were 
notonous  crooks.  The  Board,  in  fact,  was  a  villi 
and  sensitive  part  of  the  Beast,  situated  mid- 
way ,n  the  barrel  of  its  body,  where  the  man  who 

Zf:it:i;'''^'' '''''''''''''''' ''^ '^' -^^^  ^'^^^ '^^'i 

The  hind  claws  reached  for  me  first.  I  becan 
to  receive  perfumed  notes  from  unknown  young 
women,  mv.t.ng  me  to  meet  them  at  various  place! 
downtown.  Not  having  been  accustomed  to 
receive  such  b.llets-doux.  I  thought  some  ,,ractical 
joker  among  my  friends  was  making  game  of  me- 
and  I  merely  filed  the  letters  with  the  Lrl  cor^e  -' 
pondence,  and  did  not  answer  them.  Th.n  one 
l^en  Rogers,  whom  I  knew  as  a  member  of  the 
Democratic  Club,  and  an  election  cook,  came  to 
me  one  evening,  with  a  verbal  invitation  of  a  sim- 
ilar sort  from  a  young  woman  who.  he  assured  me 
was     crazy"  about  me.     I  had  no  overwhelming 

desire  to  meet  any  of  "  Len  •' Rogers's  young  ladies 
but  I  did  not  tell  him  so.     I  said  I  was  bufy.     He 

night  with  a  more  pressmg  invitation.  I  became 
curious.  Where  did  the  young  lady  liver  Se 
named  a  section  of  Curtis  Street  where  there  were 

afterward -from  a  friendly  newspaper  reported 


1 


li- 


i 


'  ■  i 


120  THE  DEAST 

wlio  heard  tlic  story,  n.s  reporters  do  —  that  sev- 
eral ini'riila'rs  of  "tlie  sung"  were  waiting  for  me, 
in  the  house,  to  expose  me  an  a  nt>ertino  if  I  came 
there.  (I  wonder  how  often  the  Beast  has  suc- 
ceeded in  this  little  j;ame?  Did  you  ever  notice 
how  many  reformers  are  nip|H-d  in  the  l>eginning 
of  a  career  by  a  timely  scandal  ?) 

Having  failed  to  catch  me  in  that  way,  an  investi- 
gation of  my  private  life  was  started.  Fortunately 
I  had  no  private  life  worth  investigating.  My 
life  —  what  there  was  of  it  —  had  all  Ijcen  public; 
and  I  had  been  too  poor  an<l  too  busy  to  get  into 
mischief.  The  sleuthing  gave  me  an  uncomfort- 
able feeling  of  being  watched  and  hunted,  but 
nothing  "eventuated,"  as  the  newspapers  say. 
After  that  came  threats  —  vague  threats  of  public 
dishonour  —  the  end  of  my  political  career!  Child- 
ish threats  and  childish  persecutions.  The  engin- 
eer of  the  Court  House  would  cut  oflf  the  electric 
light  in  my  chaml>ers  at  night  when  I  was  work- 
ing with  our  "investigating  committee";  and  our 
investigation  was  actually  carried  on  by  the  light 
of  candles  that  we  bought  at  the  corner  drugstore. 
The  janitor  refused  to  clean  our  ofFces  until  the 
closets  became  so  unsanitary  that  ive  had  to  appeal 
to  the  Board  of  Health.  I  became  a  sort  of  out- 
cast among  the  county  officials,  and  no  one  would 
speak  to  me  in  the  corridors.  As  I  went  to  my 
court  room,  men  would  mutter,  for  me  to  hear: 
"There's  the  perjured  little \"    I  found 


THE  BEAST.  (illAFT  AND  BUSINESS  la 
myself  avoided  on  the  streets  and  shunned  on  the 
ears;  and  friends  ea.ne  to  me  with  scandalous  sto- 
nes that  were  being  circulate.!  ahout  n>e  downlou n 
tor  the  first  time  in  my  life  I  thanked  my  lucky 
stars  that  I  was  not  murricl.  I  \,,^au  to  feel  a.s 
If  1  were  hvnig  in  a  nightmare.  It  is  impossil.le 
o  convey  the  effect  of  it  i.ut  it  «■»„  effective. 
«.^li,  the  Beast  knows  how  to  Ijglit! 

It  was  effective  an.!  it  was  not;  for  Lcsidcs  gct- 
tmg  on  my  nerves  it  ^.,t  on  „.y  tcnpcr.     I  pushed 
on  the  work  of  investigation,  resolved  to  reply  to 
the  covert  attacks  on  me  In  a  public  exposure  that 
shouM  at  least  let  in  the  light  upon  the  struggle. 
At  once  all  my  ol<l  friends  in  the  Democracy  flocked 
to  me,  pleading  with  me  not  to  ruin  the  party's 
chancec  .-.  the  next  election  by  publishing  the  scan- 
dal.     Mr.  John  T.  Bottom,  then  attorney  for  the 
Yumnssioners,  made  the  same  plea.    "After  the 
elections,  Judge,"  he  promised,  "we'll  bring  suit 
and  recover  the  money."     He  begged  me  to  spare 
the  boys,    and  not  be  an  "ingrate."     He  quoted 
hnes    rom  "Jul.us  Ca..sar"  about    the   ambition 
that  ehmbs  a  ladder  and  then  scorns  the  "base 
degrees"  by  which  it  ascended.     He  came  with 
two  of  the  guilty  Commissi.mers.  Fred  Watts  and 
Jj^rank  Bishop,  to  my  chambers,  and  I  had  to  face 
tJieir  appeals  not  to  ruin  them  and  disgrace  their 
families.     (Bishop  was  then  a  candidate  for  Gov- 
ernor, and  I  had  always  thought  a  good  deal  of 
nun.)     They  reminded  me  that  they  had  made 


122 


THE     BEAST 


me  County  Judge  in  the  first  place.  That  took 
me  on  the  raw.  I  said:  "It  was  not  your  office. 
It  belongs  to  the  people.  I  am  serving  them,  not 
you.  Do  you  think  because  you  used  your  pub- 
lic trast  to  appoint  me  a  judge  that  I  must  let  you 
steal?  Besides,  I  wrote  you  letters,  friendly  let- 
ters, about  these  outrageous  bills  a  month  ago, 
and  you  did  nothing.  That  contract  with  Smith- 
Brooks  is  still  in  force.  Supplies  are  being  deliv- 
ered to  my  court,  for  which  I  am  responsible,  at 
outrageous  prices.  You'  have  acted  like  a  lot  of 
thieves  and  grafters  —  and  you  keep  it  up  —  and 
you  want  me  to  protect  you  in  it.  I  won't  do  it. 
I'm  going  to  make  my  report  public.  If  this  steal- 
ing is  to  go  on,  it  must  go  on  in  public.  I  refuse 
to  protect  it  and  be  a  silent  party  in  it.  I'll  pub- 
lish my  report." 

It  was  published  in  the  Democratic  paper. 
The  Rocky  Mountain  News,  on  June  11,  1902. 

You  think,  perhaps,  that  it  made  a  great  stir. 
And  it  did.  But  if  you  think  that  the  Commis- 
sioners were  immediately  indicted  and  condemned, 
you  are  as  simple  as  I  was.  They  were  first 
allowed  to  appoint  an  investigating  committee  of 
two  men  friendly  to  them ;  and  I  —  after  a  public 
protest  —  was  allowed  to  appoint  a  third  member, 
the  printer  who  had  been  on  my  first  committee. 
Their  investigation  was  a  farce,  but  it  had  one 
serious  aspect  for  me.  The  business  men  who 
had  given  me  the  price  lists,  etc.,  on  which  we  had 


THE  BEAST,  GRAFT  AND  BUSINESS  123 

founded  our  first  report  —  men  who  had  said  to 
me  that  the  Commissioners  were  "thieves"  and 
the  Smith-Brooks  Company  were  "thieves"  — 
went  to  the  witness  stand  before  this  white-washing 
committee  and  testified  for  Smith-Brooks  and  for 
the  Commissioners.  They  could  not  "afford"  to 
hurt  their  business,  they  confessed  to  me.  One 
stationer  whom  I  knew  as  an  honest  man  and  a 
prominent  church  member,  said  to  me:  "What! 
Do  you  expect  me  to  go  on  the  witness  stand  and 
tell  what  I  told  ycm?  Never.  I  do  business  with 
the  county.  It'd  ruin  me."  I  found  that  he  had 
a  "sub-contract"  with  the  principal  contractor  for 
supplies,  and  when  he  appeared  in  court,  it  was  as 
advisor  to  the  grafters.  (The  Beast  is  to  the 
business  man  what  the  "Black  Hand"  is  to  the 
Mulberry  Street  banker.) 

I  was  not  allowed  to  appear  before  this  com- 
mittee, although  I  offered  to  testify;  and  at  the 
conclusion  of  the  "investigation"  the  two  friends 
of  the  Commissioners  made  a  report  exonerating 
them.  This,  however,  did  not  stay  the  public 
clamour.  The  News  kept  insisting  that  the  Dis- 
trict Attorney,  Harry  A.  Lindsley,  must  prosecute. 
It  became  evident  that  he  must  either  do  so  or 
rum  himself  in  the  public  estimation.  And  in  July 
the  three  Commissioners  were  charged  with  a  mis- 
demeanour —  instead  of  a  felony  —  under  a  statute 
that  provided,  as  the  extreme  penalty  of  guilt,  a 
fine  of  $300  and  dismissal  from  office  —  and  the 


■jiMtes 


184  TriE  BEAST 

Commissioners  were  about  to  go  out  of  office.  In 
any  case. 

It  was  nearly  a  year  before  we  coul'^  get  them 
brought  to  trial,  and  in  the  meantime  —  October 
and  November,  1902  —  Mr.  Charles  J.  Hughes, 
Jr.,  attorney  for  the  tramway  company,  assisted 
by  the  company's  agent,  William  G.  Smith  (whom 
I  had  known  as  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Repre- 
sentatives) obtained  from  the  accused  Commis- 
sioners a  rebate  of  $70,000  on  back  taxes  owed  by 
the  tramway  company.  Judge  Peter  L.  Palmer 
dismissed  the  injunction  proceedings  that  had  been 
begun  by  the  Municipal  League,  to  prevent  the 
granting  of  the  rebate.  And  John  T.  Bottom, 
attorney  for  the  Commissioners,  favoured  and 
argued  for  the  rebate.  "Is  it  possible,"  the  Den- 
ver Post  asked  editorially,  "that  the  fact  that 
Charles  J.  Hughes,  Jr.,  is  also  attorney  for  the 
Commissioners  in  the  criminal  cases  brought 
against  them  in  connection  with  the  county  print- 
ing steals  has  had  anything  to  do  with  the  Board's 
action  in  this  matter  of  tax  compromise  with  the 
tramway?"  It  had  seemed  to  me  that  it  was 
faintly  possible;  and  the  possibility  became  less 
faint  with  every  day  that  followed. 

The  elections  had  come  on.  I  was  interested  in 
the  contest  for  various  reasons,  but  I  was  as  care- 
fully shunned  by  politicians  as  if  it  had  been  I,  and 
not  the  Commissioners,  who  was  accused  of  crime. 
A  friend  who  was  a  member  of  the  Democratic 


THE  BEAST,  GRAFT  AND  BUSINESS  125 
Executive  Committee  went  so  far  as  to  invite  me 
to  a  meeting  of  the  committee  with  the  ward  lead- 
ers and  such  —  being  able,  under  the  rules,  to 
invite  one  initiated  guest  to  the  council  —  but  he 
did  it  only  after  I  had  pledged  myself  not  to  say 
who  mvited  me.  I  went.  And  heavens!  What 
a  reception! 

The  meeting  was  held  in  the  Windsor  Hotel, 
b  a  long  and  narrow  back  room  that  had  been 
stripped  of  everything  but  chairs,  ranged  along  the 
walls  for  the  "leaders,"  and  a  small  table  for  the 
chairman  and  his  secretary.  Bill  Davoren*  pre- 
sided—  the  redoubtable  Bill  —  with  his  small 
head  broadly  based  on  his  pink  jowls.  The  "  inter- 
ests" never  had  a  more  faithful  trencherman  than 
"Bill."  The  grafting  Commissioners  were  con- 
spicuous to  his  left.  The  District  Attorney,  Harry 
A.  Lindsley,  was  equally  conspicuous  to  his  right. 
Along  the  walls  a  galaxy  of  "the  gang"  was  seated, 
somewhat  in  the  order  of  importance.  I  slid  into 
a  chair  near  the  door,  scowled  at,  snubbed  and 
carefully  avoided  even  by  those  who,  I  knew,  were 
not  unfriendly  to  me.  I  was  a  political  leper  among 
clean  men. 

As  soon  as  proceedings  began,  Harry  Lindsley 
made  a  motion  that  no  one  should  be  allowed  to 
address  the  meeting  except  members  of  the  exec- 
utive committee,  unless  called  upon  by  the  chair- 
man.    After  some  significant  glances  in  my  direc- 

*I>*Toi«o  is  now  president  of  the  Denver  Fire  and  Police  Board. 


126 


THE  BEAST 


lion,  the  motion  was  carried.  I  did  not  speak  — 
except  once.  That  was  to  remark,  to  a  man  next 
me,  that  one  of  the  candidates  named  for  an  oflBce 
was  "a  good  man  for  the  place."  I  was  over- 
heard. My  commendation  was  passed  along  the 
line;  and  the  name  of  the  candidate  was  promptly 
crossed  oil  the  slate !  ("  Hell ! "  a  friend  of  his  said 
to  me,  "what  did  you  say  that  for?"  I  apolo- 
gized.) 

I  had  been  warned  not  to  "start  the  commis- 
sioner business."  "You  know,"  my  friend  had 
toll  me,  "we've  got  to  get  our  election  judges 
appi  inted,  and  Tom  Phillips  says  if  we  don't 
stand  by  him  and  the  other  Commissioners,  they'll 
appoint  men  that'll  knife  us  at  the  polls."  But 
the  air  was  full  of  "the  commissioner  business." 
The  News  was  charging  that  the  "grafters'  ring" 
was  in  control  of  the  party.  There  was  a  popular 
demand  for  their  repudiation.  And  some  one  at 
this  executive  meeting  proposed  a  plank  in  the 
Democratic  platform  declaring,  mildly,  for  hon- 
esty in  public  office  and  an  investigation  of  any 
alleged  dishonesty. 

Tom  Phillips,  in  an  angry  outburst,  maintained 
that  this  plank  was  a  refleftion  on  the  Commis- 
sioners. "  We  won't  stand  for  it,"  he  said.  "  We 
won't  stand  for  it."  And  in  a  confused  and  some- 
what befuddled  harangue,  he  threatened  that  if 
the  plank  was  inserted  he  would  do  what  he 
would  do. 


'li 


THE  BEAST,  GRAFT  AND  BUSINESS  127 
"Dear  people,"  behold  your  politicians!  They 
did  not  dare  declare  for  any  investigations  of  hon- 
esty in  public  office.  Mr.  Chas.  J.  Hughes,  Jr., 
—  who  is  now  United  States  Senator  from  Colo- 
rado, and  was  then  attorney  for  the  tramway  com- 
pany —  Chas.  J.  Hughes,  the  cleverest  corpora- 
tion lawyer  at  the  Colorado  bar,  wealthy, 
honoured,  bramy,  and  distinguished  —  Chas.  J. 
Hughes  rose  to  oppose  the  resolution,  m  a  ring- 
ing and  eloquent  speech.  Had  not  these  Com- 
missioners served  their  party  and  their  county 
faithfully  for  many  years  ?  Should  the  party  turn 
upon  them  now?  They  had  not  been  tried. 
They  had  not  been  found  guilty.  No,  no.  No 
declaration  for  any  mvestigations  of  honesty  in 
public  office  for  Mr.  Chas.  J.  Hughes.  And 
after  some  satirical  shafts  directed  toward  the 
obscure  corner  in  which  I  sat,  he  concluded  a 
corporation  attorney's  defence  of  a  corporation's 
tools  in  office,  with  an  appeal  that  carried  the  day. 
The  plank  was  voted  down.  I  do  not  remem- 
ber that  any  "leader"  at  the  caucus  except  ex- 
Governor  Thomas,  said  even  a  mild  word  in 
defence  of  honesty  and  in  support  of  an  investiga- 
tion. 

At  the  party  convention,  next  day,  I  appeared 
by  proxy  — I  was  not  a  delegate  — to  make  a 
speech  in  support  of  this  declaration  for  "hon- 
esty in  public  office"  (with  no  names  mentioned), 
which  Mr.  Ed.  Keating  of  the  Rocky  Mountain 


128 


THE  BEAST 


News  was  to  propose.  The  chairman  of  the 
convention  was  the  attorney  for  Smith-Brooks! 
John  T.  Bottom,  attorney  for  the  Commissioners, 
met  me  on  the  floor  and  threatened  that  if  I 
opened  my  mouth  I  should  be  accused  before  the 
convention  of  something  awful,  something  damn- 
ing, something,  however,  unspecified !  I  told  him 
to  go  ahead  and  be  as  awful  as  he  chose.  Keat- 
ing proposed  the  resolution,  and  I  tried  to  speak 
to  it,  but  we  were  howled  down  with  contempt  and 
anger,  curses  and  execrations.  We  were  treated 
as  if  we  had  been  a  pair'  of  rowdies  who  had  inter- 
rupted, with  profanity  and  an  unclean  presence, 
a  meeting  in  a  church.  I  shall  never  forget  the 
angry  indignation  in  the  eyes  of  some  of  the  dele- 
gates about  me. 

I  began  to  ask  myself:  "What  have  I  done? 
Am  I  really  the  sort  of  despicable  hound  that  I 
seem  to  appear  to  these  fellow-Democrats?"  I 
actually  began  to  wonder  whether  I  might  not  be 
some  sort  of  political  renegade,  incapable  of  appre- 
ciating my  own  treason.  And  yet,  some  way,  I 
could  not  see  that  I  was ! 

When  Bryan  came  to  town,  a  great  mass-meet- 
ing was  held  for  him;  and  all  the  county  judges  — 
excepting  myself  —  and  all  the  county  officials  — 
including  the  three  grafting  Commissioners  —  were 
invited  to  sit  on  the  platform  behind  him.  I 
squeezed  into  the  crowded  hall  and  watched  the 
Commissioners,  on  the  stage,  lead  the  rip-roaring 


THE  BEAST,  GRAFT  AND  BUSINESS  129 
applause  that  greeted  Mr.  Bryan's  fervid  defence 
of  the  people  and  the  people's  ;ights.  I  knew,  of 
course,  that  the  oflBcials  would  return  next  day  to 
the  Court  House,  and  send  an  order  for  supplies  to 
a  "prominent  busmess  man"  that  would  read 
somethmg  like  this:  "One  dozen  letter  files. 
$72"  (value  $4.80);  "one  thousand  sheets  of 
ruled  paper,  $280"  (value  $10);  "fifty  index 
books,  $600"  (value  $30).  And  when  Roose- 
velt came  to  town,  the  "prominent  business  man" 
(being  a  Republican)  would  cheer  Roosevelt  as 
wildly  as  the  Commissioners  cheered  Bryan.  And 
the  people's  rights  would  be  safe.     Quite  safe. 

Do  not  imagme  that  I  am  cynical.  I  am  not 
attacking  men.  I  am  attacking  the  conditions  that 
debauch  men.  I  am  not  attacking  these  victims 
of  the  Beast  and  the  System;  I  am  trying  to 
show  the  power  of  the  Beast  and  the  effects  of 
the  System.  "Judge,"  Tom  Phillips  once  said 
to  me,  "if  these  big  guys,  who  put  up  the  money 
to  elect  us,  expect  us  to  help  their  big  graft  of  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  in  rebates  of  taxes  to  their 
corporations,  why  shouldn't  we  get  a  little  on  the 
side?"  "And,  Judge,"  the  prominent  business 
man  pleaded,  "I've  got  to  do  business  with  these 
people.  They  can  ruin  me  in  a  week  if  they  want 
to.  I  can't  afford  to  quarrel  with  my  bread  and 
butter."  "  And,  Judge,"  a  beady-eyed  little  crook 
said  to  me  one  day  in  my  chambers,  "I  read  the 
papers.    I  know  what's  goin'  on  in  this  burg. 


':(:■. 


130 


THE  BEAST 


What  do  you  want  to  jump  on  me  fer?    I  ain't 
swipin'  the  way  those  fullahs  is." 

Long  before  the  Commissioners  came  up  for 
trial  I  knew  that  it  was  I  who  was  to  be  tried,  not 
they.  They  were  to  be  acquitted,  vindicated,  and 
I  was  to  be  "pi  t  in  a  hole."  The  sheriff  was 
friendly  to  the  "accused."  The  jury  was  made 
up  of  their  friends  and  of  men  with  whom  they 
did  business.  The  judge  was  brought  in  from 
Pueblo  County,  where  the  Colorado  Fuel  and  Iron 
Company  controlled  the  political  machine,  and  he 
had  aspirations.  Cass  Herrington,  counsel  for  the 
Colorado  Fuel  and  Iron  Company,  acted  as  a 
sort  of  silent  attorney  for  the  defence.  Charles 
J.  Hughes,  Jr.,  attorney  for  the  corptorations, 
was  the  chief  counsel,  and  when  he  got  me  in  the 
witness  box  what  a  time  he  had,  to  be  sure!  Dis- 
trict Attorney  Lindsley  refused  to  appear  in  court 
against  the  grafters,  but  I  had  a  friend  in  his 
office,  a  deputy  attorney,  George  Allen  Smith, 
and  for  his  attempt  to  convict  the  grafters  he  was 
forced  later  to  resign  his  place.  The  strain  of 
the  trial  and  of  the  persecutions  that  accompanied 
it,  wore  me  out.  I  was  ill.  I  heard  on  all  sides 
that  the  Commissioners  were  to  be  acquitted  and 
that  I  was  to  be  prosecuted  for  perjury.  I  heard 
it  from  men  in  the  District  Attorney's  office,  from 
newspaper  reporters,  from  county  officials.  I  over- 
heard men  talking  of  it  in  the  corridors.  I  saw 
it  in  the  exulting  eyes  of  enemies   in   my  court 


THE  BEAST.  GRAFT  AND  BUSINESS  181 

room.  And  when,  on  the  morning  that  the  ver- 
dict was  returned,  the  old  bailiff  of  my  court  came 
ninnmg  up  to  the  bench  where  I  sat  hearing  cases 
m  a  sick  despondence,  I  nearly  fainted  in  my 
chair  when  he  whispered:  "They've  found  'em 
guilty!" 

How!  How  did  it  happen?  Why,  one  of  the 
jurors  argued:  "Boys,  these  fellows  are  only 
charged  with  a  misdemeanour.  The  worst  they 
can  get  is  a  little  fine.  But  if  we  acquit  them  on 
♦his  charge  and  another  District  Attorney  gets 
mto  office,  he  may  charge  them  with  a  felony 
and  get  them  sent  to  the  penitentiary."  And  the 
friendly  jury  found  them  guilty  of  a  misdemeanour 
to  save  them  from  a  worse  fate!  "Judge,"  that 
juror  said  to  me  afterward,  "no  one'll  ever  get 
me  into  any  graft  investigations  again.  I  was 
blamed  for  that  verdict  by  the  other  fellows  when 
the  grafters  went  after  them  for  it,  and  1  tell  you 
I've  lost  thousands  of  dollars  in  my  business  by 

it.    And  d them,  I  did   it   as   a  favour  to 

them  —  to  save  them  from  the  pen!" 

The  Commissioners    were   furious.     The  Dis- 
trict Attorney  was  scared  white.    And  the  judge 
—  Judge  Voorhees,  of  Pueblo  —  well,  here  is  part 
of  his  speech,  from  the  newspapers  of  August  12 
1903:  ^ 

"In  passing  sentence,  this  statute,  while  it  is 
penal  in  its  nature,  as  I  look  at  it,  does  not  brand 
these  gentlemen  as  being  criminals.    I  don't  think 


ti. 


132  THE  BEAST 

the  evidence  in  this  case  warrants  any  such  con- 
elusion  "  He  believed  "these  defendants  to  be 
honourable  gentlemen."  He  did  not  ask  them 
as  ordinary  criminals  to  "  step  up  to  He  sentenced," 
but  merely  gave  them  "an  opportunity,  if  any  of 
them  have  anything  to  say,"  to  say  it  before  he 
paused  sentence.  And  his  sentence  was  a  fine 
of  ten  dollars  each! 

Do  you  blame  the  judge?  Do  you  blame  the 
jury,  the  District  Attorney,  the  coiu^  officials,  or 
even  the  accused  ?  Why  should  you  ?  Would  you 
blame  the  girl  who  was  ruined  in  the  wine  room 
or  the  dive  keeper  who  was  ruined  to  ruin  her? 
Would  you  blame  the  boys  who  were  polluted  in 
the  jails?  No!  They  were  the  victims,  not  the 
authors,  of  their  infamy.  If  you  must  blame  some 
one,  blame  those  heads  of  lawless  public-ser'ce 
corporations  in  Colorado  who  corrupt  jurl  ;s, 
juries,  legislators,  public  officials,  political  wo  kers, 
gamblers,  dive  keepers,  and  prostitutes,  so  that 
they  and  their  corporations  may  be  safe  above  the 
law  and  in  power  to  loot  the  people.  They  are 
the  men.  To  them  accrues  the  profit  of  this 
debauchery.    Let  them  Dear  its  shame. 


CHAPTER  Vm 


AT  WORK  WITH   THE  CHILDBEN 

THROUGH  these  two  years  of  quarrellmg  and 
crusading,  our  court  work  for  the  children 
was  going  on  very  happily.  It  was  a  recreation 
for  us  all,  and  it  kept  me  full  of  hope  —  for  it  was 
successful.  We  were  getting  the  most  unexpected 
results.  We  were  learning  something  new  every 
day.  We  were  deducing,  from  what  we  learned, 
theories  to  be  tested  in  daily  practice,  and  then 
devising  court  methods  by  which  to  apply  the 
theories  that  proved  correct.  It  had  all  the  fas- 
cination of  scientific  research,  of  practical  inven- 
tion, and  of  a  work  of  charity  combined.  It  was 
a  succession  of  surprises  and  a  continual  joy. 

I  had  begun  merely  with  a  sympathy  for  chil- 
dren and  a  conviction  that  our  laws  against  crime 
were  as  inapplicable  to  children  as  they  would  be 
to  idiots.  I  soon  realized  that  not  only  our  laws 
but  our  whole  system  of  criminal  procedure  was 
wrong.  It  was  based  upon  fear;  and  fear,  with 
children,  as  with  their  elders,  is  the  father  of  lies. 
I  found  that  when  a  boy  was  brought  before  me, 
I  could  do  nothing  with  him  until  I  had  taken  the 
fear  out  of  hb  heart;  but  once  I  had  gotten  rid 

133 


m 


IS4 


THE  BEAST 


of  that  fear,  I  found  —  to  my  own  amazement  — 
that  I  could  do  anything  with  him.  I  could  do 
things  that  seemed  miraculous,  especially  to  the 
police,  who  seldom  tried  anything  hut  abuse  and 
curses,  and  the  more  or  less  refined  brutalities  of 
the  "sweat  box"  and  the  "tb/d  degree."  I 
learned  that  instead  of  fear  we  must  use  sympathy, 
but  without  cant,  without  hypocrisy,  and  without 
sentimentalism.  We  must  first  convince  the  boy 
that  we  were  his  friends  but  the  determined  ene- 
mies of  his  misdeeds;  that  we  wished  to  help  him 
to  do  T'g'ht,  but  could  do  nothing  for  him  if  he  per- 
sisted in  doing  wrong.  We  had  to  encourage  him 
)'  confess  his  wrongdoing,  teach  him  wherein  it 
nad  been  wrongdoing,  and  strengthen  him  to  do 
right  thereafter. 

I  found  —  what  so  many  others  have  found  — 
that  children  are  neither  good  nor  bad,  but  either 
strong  or  weak.  They  are  naturally  neither  moral 
nor  immoral  —  but  merely  unmoral.  They  are 
little  savages,  living  in  a  civilized  society  that  has 
not  yet  civilized  them,  often  at  war  with  it,  fre- 
quently punished  by  it,  and  always  secretly  in 
rebellion  against  it,  until  the  influences  of  the  home, 
the  school  and  the  church  gradually  overcome  their 
natural  savagery  and  make  them  moral  and 
responsible  members  of  society.  The  mistake  of 
the  criminal  law  had  been  to  punish  these  little 
savages  as  if  they  had  been  civilized,  and  by  so 
doing,  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten,  make  them  crim- 


AT  WORK  WITH  THE  CHILDREN  133 
inal  savages.  Our  work,  we  found,  was  to  aid 
the  civilizing  forces  -the  home,  the  school,  and 
the  church  -  and  to  protect  society  hy  malting  th- 
children  good  members  of  society  instead  of 
punishing  them  for  t„>ing  irresponsible  ones.  If 
we  failed,  and  the  child  proved  incorrigible,  the 
criminal  law  could  then  be  invoked.  But  the 
infrequency  with  which  we  failed  was  one  of  the 
surprises  of  the  work. 

Take,  for  example,  the  case  of  Lee  Martin  and 
his    'River  Front  Gang."      He  was  a  bov  burg- 
lar,  a  sneak  thief,   a  pickpocket,  a  jail  breaker, 
and  a  tramp;  and  his  "gang"  was  known  to  the 
newspapers  as  the  most  desperate  band  of  young 
cnmmals  in  Denver.     Lee  Martin  and  another 
member  of  the  gang,  named  Jack  Heirael,  were 
one  night  caught  in  a  drugstore  into  which  they 
had  broken;  and  when  I  went  to  see  them  in  jail, 
1  found  them  strapped  to  the  benches  in  their 
cells,  bruised  and  battered  from  an  interview  with 
the  police,  in  whioh  they  had  been  punished  for 
refusing  to  ".,jitch"  (tell)  on  their  fellow-mem- 
bers  of  the  gang.     This  was  before  the  passage 
of  our  juvenile  court  laws  and  I  wished  to  have 
an  opportunity  to  try  what  I  could  do  with  these 
two  boys.     The  police  did  not  wish  me  to  have 
them. 

I  told  the  boys  that  I  intended  to  try  to  help 
them,  and  they  sneered  at  me.  I  told  them  that 
I  thought  they  had  not  been  given  "a  square 


136 


THE  BEAST 


deal" — which  was  true — but  they  did  not  re- 
spond. I  used  what  tact  and  sympathy  I  could 
to  draw  them  out  and  get  their  side  of  the  story 
of  their  war  with  society,  but  it  took  me  some- 
thing  like  a  month  of  frequent  visits  to  get  them  to 
trust  me  and  to  believe  that  I  wished  to  help  them. 
In  the  end  I  was  successful.  I  got  their  story  — 
a  story  too  long  to  repeat  here;  but  it  proved  to 
me  that  the  boys  had  been  as  much  sinned  against 
as  sinning.  They  had  begun  as  irresponsible  lit- 
tle savages,  and  they  had  been  made  desperate 
young  criminals.  Their  parents  had  failed  to 
ci\llize  them,  and  the  school  and  the  church  had 
never  had  an  opportunity  to  try.  I  resolved  to  see 
if  it  was  too  late  to  begin. 

The  police  captain  assured  me  that  it  was. 
"You  can't  'baby'  Lee  Martin."  he  said.  "He's 
been  in  jail  thirteen  times,  and  it  hasn't  done  him 
any  good." 

"Well,  I'd  like  to  see  what  we  can  do,"  I 
replied.  "If  we  fail,  we'll  still  have  twelve 
times  the  best  of  the  jail.  It  has  cost  this  city, 
in  officers'  fees  alone,  over  a  thousand  dollars  to 
make  a  criminal  of  him.  Let  us  see  how  much 
it  will  cost  to  turn  him  into  an  honest  boy." 

The  officer  reeled  off  a  long  list  of  Martin's 
offences,  and  I  retorted  by  showing  a  typewritten 
record  of  them,  twice  as  long.  "How  in  the 
world  did  you  get  'em.  Judge?"  he  said.  "We 
couldn't  sweat  'em  out  of  him." 


AT  WORK  WITH  THE  CHILDREN  137 
After  a  week  of  such  argument,  we  got  the 
case  referred  to  our  court.  The  boys  were  tried; 
and.  of  course,  their  guilt  was  clear.  I  sent  them 
back  to  the  jail  under  suspended  sentence,  and 
thought  the  matter  over. 

One  night  I  had  them  brought  to  my  chambers 
under  guard,  and  after  a  talk  with  Heimel  I  sent 
hun  and  the  guard  away,  and  concentrated  on 
Martm.     I   decided    to   put   my   influence   over 
hun  to  the  test.    I  told  him  of  the  fight  I  was 
makmg  for  him,  showed  him  how  I  had  been 
spendmg  all  my  spare  time  "trying  to  straighten 
things  out     for  hii ,  and  Heimel,  and  warned  him 
that  the  police  did  not  bel.Vve  I  could  succeed. 
JNow,  Lee,     I  said,  "you  can  run  away  if  you 
want  to,  and  prove  me  a  liar  to  the  cops.     But 
I  want  to  help  you,  and  I  want  you  to  stand  by 
me.    I  want  you  to  trust  me,  and  I  want  you  to 
go  back  to  the  jail  there,  and  let  me  do  the  best 
I  can." 

He  went.    And  he  went  alone  —  unguarded. 
Then  I  put  him  and  Heunel  on  probation,  and 

!i\,*/rj.fy'  ^^^y  "^"^^  '«  «««  ™e  and  brought 
Red  Mike  and  Tommie  Green,  of  the  "River 
Front  Gang."  I  talked  to  them  about  their  offences 
against  the  law,  and  told  them  I  wanted  to  help 
them  do  what  was  right  and  live  honest  lives 
unpersecuted  by  the  police;  and  I  praised  Martin 
for  his  moral  strength  in  going  back  to  the  jail 
alone.     Before  they  left  me,  "Red"  and  Tommie 


!K 


138 


THE  BEAST 


had  "snitched"  on  themselves,  and  I  had  two 
new  probationers.  One  by  one  the  others  fol- 
lowed, until  I  had  all  seven  members  of  the  gang 
on  my  list,  all  confessed  wrongdoers  pledged 
to  give  up  crime  and  make  an  honest  effort  to  be 
"straight."  Six  of  the  seven  are  to-day  honest 
young  workmen;  Lee  Martin  failed,  after  a  long 
and  plucky  fight,  and  is  now  in  the  penitentiary. 
"The  River  Front  Gang,"  to  my  knowledge,  has 
been  responsible  for  the  reformation  of  thirty 
boys  in  Denver;  and  Lee  Martin,  in  his  time,  did 
more  to  discourage  crime  than  any  policeman  in 
the  city. 

For  example :  one  day  a  boy  —  whom  I  knew  — 
stole  a  pocketbook  from  a  woman  in  a  department 
store.  I  told  Lee  that  something  ought  to  be  done 
for  that  boy,  and  Lee  brought  him  to  me  —  from 
a  cheap  theatre  where  he  had  been  "treating  the 
gang."  We  worked  on  him  together,  and  we 
straightened  him  up.  He  has  since  become  a 
trusted  employee  in  the  very  store  in  which  he  stole 
the  pocketbook. 

In  another  instance,  I  sent  Lee  after  a  boy, 
arrested  for  stealing  a  watch,  who  had  sawed  his 
way  out  of  jail  and  had  not  been  recaptured  by 
the  police.  Lee  got  him  —  in  El  Paso  —  and 
brought  him  to  me.  After  a  talk  with  him,  I  gave 
him  a  twenty-dollar  bill  and  sent  him,  alone, 
unshadowed,  to  redeem  the  watch,  which  he  had 
pawned  for  $3.    He  returned  with  the  watch  and 


AT  WORK  WITH  THE  CHILDREN     139 

the  $17  change.  Then  I  persuaded  him  to  return 
the  watch  to  the  man  from  whom  he  had  stolen  it 
and,  of  course,  the  prosecution  against  him  was 
dropped.  We  have  never  since  had  a  complaint 
agamst  that  boy,  although  he  had  been  one  of  the 
worst  boy  thieves  in  the  city. 

I  could  relate  cases  of  this  sort  interminably  I 
have  related  them,  in  newspaper  interviews,  in 
magazme  articles,  and  from  the  public  platform 
And  I  'ad  that  many  people  have  misunderstood 
me  and  have  accepted  my  statements  as  evidence 
that  I  have  some  sort  of  hypnotic  power  over  boys 
and  can  make  them  do  things  contrary  to  their 
natures.  I  can  not.  I  do  nothing  that  any  man 
or  woman  cannot  do  by  the  same  method.  It  is 
the  method  that  works  the  miracle  —  although  of 
course,  no  one  in  his  senses  will  claim  that  the 
method  never  fails,  that  there  are  no  cases  b 
which  force  and  punishment  have  to  be  used 
^Another  lesson  about  boys  I  learned  from  little 

»w'!u  ^-  V^y^""  '  '^'^  investigating  his  charge 
that  the  jailer  had  beaten  him.     The  jailer  said: 

Some  o  those  kids  broke  a  window  in  there,  and 
when  I  asked  Mickey  who  it  was  he  said  he  didn't 
know.  O-  course  he  knew.  D'  you  think  I'm 
gom  to  have  kids  lie  to  me?"  A  police  com- 
missioner who  was   present   turned   to   Mickey: 

Mickey,  he  said,  "why  did  you  lie?"  Mickey 
faced  us.  in  his  rags.  "Say,"  he  asked,  "do  yuh 
t  mk  a  fuUah  ought  to  snitch  on  a  kid  ?  "    And  the 


140 


THE  BEAST 


way  he  a^ked  it  made  me  ashamed  of  myself. 
Here  was  a  quality  of  loyalty  that  we  should  be 
fostering  in  him  instead  of  trying  to  crush  out  of 
him.  It  was  the  beginning,  in  the  boy,  of  that 
feeling  of  responsibility  to  his  fellows  on  which 
society  is  founded.  Thereafter  no  child  brought 
before  our  court  was  ever  urged  to  turn  state's 
evidence  against  his  partners  in  crime  —  much  less 
rewarded  for  doing  so,  or  punished  for  refusing  to 
do  so.  Each  was  encouraged  to  "snilch"  on  him- 
self, and  himself  only. 

Still  another  lesson  I  learned  from  an  inveterate 
little  runaway  named  Harry.  After  several  attempts 
to  reform  him,  I  sentenced  him  to  the  Industrial 
School  in  Golden;  and  this  being  before  the  days 
of  the  Detention  School,  he  was  returned  to  the  jail 
until  a  sheriff  could  "take  him  up."  That  night 
the  jailer  telephoned  me  that  Harry  was  in  hys- 
terics, screaming  in  his  cell  and  calling  wildly  to 
me  to  help  him.  "You'd  better  come  down. 
Judge,"  the  jailer  said,  "an'  see  if  you  can  get 
him  quiet."  I  went  to  the  jail.  Inside,  the  steel 
doors  were  opened  and  the  steel  bolts  withdrawn, 
one  by  one,  with  a  portentous  clanking  and  grating. 
It  was  as  if  we  were  about  to  penetrate  to  some 
awful  dungeon  in  which  a  murderous  giant  was 
penned  —  so  formidable  were  the  iron  obstacles 
that  were  swung  back  before  us  and  clashed^shut 
on  our  heels.  And  when  I  reached,  at  the  end  of 
a  guarded  corridor,  the  barred  door  of  Harry's 


AT  WORK  WITH  THE  CHILDREN  141 
cell  there,  in  the  dim  glow  of  a  hght  overhead, 
he  boy  lay  asleep  on  the  floor,  his  round  little 
legs  drawn  up.  his  head  pillowed  on  his  tiny  arm 
his  baby  face  pale  under  the  prison  lamp.  The 
sight  was  so  pitifully  ridiculous  that  I  choked  up 
at  It.     It  seemed   such  a  folly  -  .uch  a   cruel 

terror  "^  *  ''^'^^  '"  '"''''  *  P'"^^  °^  '""^'y 

The  jailer  opened  the  cell  door  for  me,  and  I 
began  to  raise  the  boy  to  put  him  on  his  prison 
stretcher.       H«  head  fell  back  over  my  arm. 
like  an    mfant's.    He   woke   with   a   start   and 
clutched  me,  m  a  return  of  the  hysterical  fear  that 
had  been  mercifully  forgotten  m  sleep.    And  then, 
when  he  recognized  me.  "Judge."  he  pleaded. 
Judge.     Gi   me  another  chance.    I'll  be  good. 
Judge!    Just    once -once    more.     Judge'"    I 
had  to  sit  down  beside  him  on  the  floor  Ind  try 
to  reassure  him.  ' 

I  tried  to  be  stern  with  him.  I  told  him  that 
1  had  trusted  him  and  trusted  him  again  and 
again;  and  he  had  failed  me  every  time  I 
exp  amed  that  we  were  sending  him  to  the  Indus- 
trial  School  for  his  own  good,  to  make  a  "strong" 
boy  of  hun;  that  he  was  "weak."  untrustworthy. 
1  can  help  you,  Harry,"  I  said.  "But  you've 
got  to  carry  yourself.  If  I  let  boys  go  when  they 
do  bad  thmgs,  I'll  lose  my  job.  The  people'!! 
another  judge,  in  mv  dace,  to         "  " 


if  /  don't  do  it.    I  can't  let 


pla 
you  go.' 


punish  boys. 


'  i 


148  THE  BEAST 

We  went  over  it  and  over  it;  and  at  last  I 
thought  I  had  him  feeling  more  resigned  and 
cheerful,  and  I  got  up  to  leave  him.  But  when 
I  turned  to  the  door,  he  fell  on  his  knees  before 
me  and  stretching  out  his  little  arms  to  me,  his 
face  dktorted  with  tears,  he  cried:  "Judge! 
Judge!  If  you  let  me  go,  I'll  never  get  you  into 
trouble  againi" 

I  had  him !  It  was  the  voice  of  loyalty.  "  Mac," 
I  said  to  the  jailer,  "this  boy  goes  with  me.  I'll 
write  an  order  for  his  release." 

I  took  him  to  his  home  that  night,  but  his  mother 
did  not  wish  to  have  him  back.  Her  husband 
had  deserted  her;  she  worked  all  day  in  a  hotel 
kitchen;  she  could  not  take  proper  care  of  her 
boy,  and  she  was  afraid  that  he  would  be  killed 
on  some  of  his  long  "bumming"  trips  in  the 
freight  cars.  But  she  finally  consented  to  give 
him  another  trial;  and  this  tune  he  "stuck." 
"Judge,"  she  told  me  long  afterward,  "I  asked 
Harry,  the  other  day,  how  it  was  he  was  so  good 
for  you,  when  he  wouldn't  do  it  for  me  or  the 
policeman.  And  he  says :  '  Well,  maw,  you  see 
if  I  gets  bad  agin,  the  Judge  he'll  lose  hb  job. 
I've  got  to  stay  with  him,  'cause  he  stayed  with 
me.'"  I  have  used  that  appeal  to  loyalty  hun- 
dreds of  times  since,  in  our  work  with  the  boys, 
and  it  is  almost  infallibly  successful. 

I  saw,  too,  from  Harry's  case,  that  if  we  were 
to  reform  children  we  must  help  parents  who 


AT  WORK  WITH  THE  CHILDREN    143 

were  unable  to  keep  a  close  watch  on  their  chil- 
dren.    And  nowadays  if  one  of  our  probationers 
fails  to  arrive  at  school,  the  teacher  is  required 
to  telephone  the    Juvenile    Court    immediately, 
and  a  probation  oflScer  starts  out  at  once  to  find 
the  delinquent.     Every  two  weeks,   on   "report 
day,"  the  probationers  must  bring  us  reports  on 
their  behaviour  from  the  school,  the  home  and 
the  neighbourhood;    and  by  praising  those  who 
have  good  reports  and  censuring  those  who  have 
bad  ones,  we  are  not  only  able  to  prevent  wrong- 
doing but  to  encourage  right-doing.     We  impress 
on  the  children  the  need  of  doing  right  because 
it  is  right,  because  it  "hurts  to  do  wrong,"  because 
only    "weak    kids"    do    wrong  — no<    because 
wrong  is  punished;   for  that  teaching,  I  believe, 
is  the  great  error  of  our  ethics.     The  fear  of  pun- 
ishment, I  find,  makes  weak  children  liars  and 
hypocrites,  and,  with  strong  ones,  it  adds  to  the 
enticement  of  evil  all  the  proverbial  sweetness  of 
forbidden  fruit. 

During  the  first  two  years  of  our  work,  554 
children  were  put  on  probation;  only  31  were 
ever  returned  to  the  court  again,  and  of  these 
31  a  number  were  returned  and  sent  to  Golden 
because  of  the  hopelessness  of  reforming  them 
in  their  squalid  homes. 

One  evening  a  probationer  brought  four  boys 
to  my  chambers  with  the  announcement  that  they 
wished  to   "snitch"  on   themselves.    They  had 


\m 


144 


THE  BEAST 


been  stealing  bicycles  —  making  a  regular  prac- 
tice of  it  —  and  they  had  five  such  thefts  to  their 
discredit.  I  investigated  their  story  and  found 
it  to  be  true.  The  police  had  a  complete  record 
of  the  thefts,  and  I  tried  —  and  got  the  boys  to 
try  —  to  recover  the  wheels,  but  we  could  not; 
they  had  been  sold  and  resold  and  quite  lost 
track  of.  A  police  officer,  with  whom  I  con- 
sulted, insisted  that  the  boys  should  be  arrested 
and  sentenced  to  jail ;  and  while  I  listened  to  him 
it  dawned  upon  me  what  the  difference  was  between 
the  criminal  procedure  and  the  methods  of  our 
court.  "Officer,"  I  said,  "you  are  trying  to 
save  bicycles.  I  am  trying  to  save  boys.  The 
boys  are  more  important  than  the  bicycles.  And 
if  we  can  save  the  boys  we  can  save  bicycles  in 
the  future  that  we  could  not  save  in  the  past." 
I  put  the  boys  on  probation,  with  the  under- 
standing that  if  they  did  not  live  up  to  their  new 
resolve  to  be  honest,  I  should  be  allowed  to  use 
their  confessions  against  them.  Not  one  of  them 
failed  me.  The  court  helped  them  to  get  work 
and  they  are  honest  and  useful  members  of  soci- 
ety to-day. 

In  one  year  201  boys  came  in  this  way  to 
our  court,  voluntarily,  and  confessed  their  wrong- 
doing, and  promised  to  "cut  it  out." 

One  evening,  after  I  had  adjourned  court  and 
the  room  had  emptied,  I  saw  a  youngster  sitting 
in  a  chair  by  the  rear  wall,  apparently  forgotten 


AT  WORK  WITH  THE  CHILDREN    145 

by  his  parents.     He  was  no  bigger  than  a  baby. 
I  sent  the  bailiff  to  ask  him  if  he  knew  his  name 
or  his  address.     He  came  up  to  the  bench  —  to 
my  chair  on  the  platform  — and  hiding  his  face 
against  my  shoulder  he  began  to  cry.     He  had 
been  "swipb'  things."  he  said,  and  wanted  to 
"cut  it  out. "    And  would  I  give  him  a  chance  — 
as  I  had  another  boy  he  knew?     We  gave  him 
a  chance.     He  reported  regularly,  for  more  than 
a  year,  and  proved  to  be  an  honest,  sturdy  boy. 
Another  boy  who  came  to  my  chambers  with  a 
similar  confession  was  so  small  that  I  said  to 
him,  "You're  a  mighty  little  boy.     How  did  you 
find  your  way  down  here?"    "Well,"  he  replied, 
"most  every  kid  I  seed  knew  the  way."    I  found 
that  nearly  all  these  boys  were  members  of  neigh- 
bourhood   "gangs,"   that   some   member   of   the 
gang  had  been  in  court,  had  gone  back  to  the 
gang  with  the  lessons  we  had  tried  to  teach  him 
and  had  used  his  influence  to  send  the  other  boys 
to  us.     We  began  to  reach  for  this  gang  spirit  and 
to  turn  it  to  our  uses  instead  of  against  us;   and 
we  succeetled  there,  too,  in  time.     I  could  relate 
scores  of  stories  that  came  to  us  of  how  the  gangs 
threatened  to  "beat  up"  some  young  delinquent 
if  he  did   not   play    "square   with   the   Judge." 
We  taught  the  boys  who  had  Insen  doing  wrong 
that  they  should  try  to  "owtwme  the  evil"  they 
had  done,  by  now  doing  something  good;    and 
they  practis*<i  thiti  doctrine  by  persuading  their 


146  THE  BEAST 

companions  to  desist  from  some  mbchief  they 
had  planned. 

I  even  had  a  little  newsboy  come  to  me  with 
the  assurance  that  if  I  wanted  the  "street  kids" 
to  stop  "shooting  craps,"  I  need  only  go  down 
and  tell  them  so.  "Dhere  ain't  a  kid  in  dhe 
whole  push,"  he  said,  "dhat  won't  go  down  the 
line  wit'  )Tih,  Judge.  Dhe  cops  can't  make  'em 
stop  craps,  but  I  bet  dhey'd  do  it  fer  you."  I 
did  not  try  it.  I  did  not  believe  that  I  could  per- 
manently stop  street  boys  shooting  craps;  it  is 
as  natural  for  them  to  gamble  as  for  schoolboys 
to  play  marbles.  But  I  rejoiced  in  the  loyalty, 
the  spirit  of  cooperation,  shown  by  these  street 
gamins.  Therein  lies  the  success  of  the  Juven- 
ile Court. 

In  the  days  before  we  got  our  Detention  School 
any  boy  sentenced  to  the  Industrial  School  at 
Golden  had  to  be  returned  to  the  jail  to  wait 
until  a  deputy  sheriff  could  "take  him  up."  I 
found  that  the  deputies  were  keeping  the  boys  m 
jail  until  there  were  several  under  sentence,  and 
then  making  one  trip  and  charging  the  county 
mileage  on  each  boy.  Petty  graft  again!  And 
conditions  in  the  jail  were  as  I  have  already 
described  them. 

I  tried  to  make  the  deputies  take  the  boys  sepa- 
rately, immediately  after  sentence;  but  I  did 
not  succeed.  The  grafters  were  protected  by  the 
politicians,  and  I  was  powerless.     "Very  well," 


AT  WORK  WITH  THE  CHILDREN     147 

I  said,  "I'll  see  whether  I  cannot  send  these  boys 
to  Golden  alone,  without  any  guard,  and  cut 
out  your  fees  entirely."    And  I  succeeded. 

I  took  each  boy  into  my  chambers  and  told 
him  that  I  wanted  him  to  i;o  to  Golden.  "Now," 
I  would  say,  "if  you  think  I'm  making  a  mistake 
in  trying  to  save  you  —  if  you  think  you're  not 
worth  saving  — don't  go.  Run  away,  if  you 
feel  that  way  about  it.  I  can't  help  you  if  you 
don't  want  to  help  yourself.  You've  been  a 
weak  boy.  You've  been  doing  bad  things.  I 
want  you  to  be  a  strong  boy  and  do  what's  right. 
We  don't  send  boys  to  Golden  to  punish  them. 
We  do  it  to  help  them.  They  give  you  a  square 
deal  out  there  —  teach  you  a  trade  so  you  can 
earn  an  honest  living  and  look  anybody  in  the 
face.  I'm  not  going  to  bring  a  deputy  in  here 
and  handcuff  you  and  have  you  taken  away  like 
that.  Here  are  your  commitment  papers.  Go 
yourself  and  go  alone  —  or  don't  go  at  all  if 
you  don't  think  I'm  trying  to  help  you  and 
sending  you  there  for  your  own  good."  And 
invariably,  the  boy  went.  In  eight  years,  out 
of  507  cases,  I  had  only  five  failures.  One 
of  these  \\as  a  boy  who  thought  he  was  being 
followed  and  who  ran  away  instinctively  "to 
beat  the  game."  Another  was  a  boy  who  con- 
fessed that  he  couldn't  "make  it,"  because  the 
route  to  Golden  led  him  past  his  old  "stamping 
grounds";    and   when  I  gave  him  tickets  over 


9 

111' 


*. 


148  THE  BEAST 

another  route,  he  made  the  trip  succewfully.  A 
third  was  an  hysterical  youngster  who  got  as  far 
as  the  railroad  station  with  an  older  lad,  but 
broke  down  there  and  could  not  go  on.  None 
of  the  failures  were  outright;  and  none  of  the 
boys  were  lost.  (During  these  eight  years,  the 
police,  I  was  told,  lost  forty-two  "breakaways" 
who  were  never  recovered.)  And  we  saved  the 
county  several  thousand  dollars  in  mileage  fees. 

One  boy,  whom  the  police  considered  the 
worst  little  runaway  in  town,  took  hLs  papers  and 
delivered  himself  at  Golden  while  the  polii- 
waited,  with  expectant  grins,  to  hear  that  he  had 
made  off;  and  those  police  were  so  sure  he  would 
fail  me  that  they  had  two  reporters  "tipped  off" 
to  watch  the  case  and  write  it  up.  I  have  had 
a  young  burglar,  on  trial,  escape  from  the  court 
room  and  evade  the  police  —  only  to  come  to  my 
house  at  midnight  and  surrender  himself  to  me, 
because  his  gang  had  told  him  that  I  would  "be 
square"  with  him  if  he  was  "square"  with  me. 
And  not  only  children  have  gone  alone  to  jail. 
Grown  men  whom  I  have  found  guilty  of  "con- 
tributory delinquency"  have  done  the  same  thing, 
satisfied  that  they  had  broken  the  laws  and  should 
bear  the  penalty. 

This  achievement  of  our  Juvenile  Court  has 
attracted  more  attention  than  anything  else  we 
have  done;  and  yet  it  is  not  an  isolated  act;  it 
is  merely  one  of  the  results  of  the  method.    The 


AT  WORK  WITH  THE  CHILDREN     149 

criminal  law  is  founded  on  vengeance.  It  treats 
all  criminals  as  born  criminals,  incorrigible  and 
unforgivable.  It  is  designed  to  save  property, 
not  l;>  save  men;  and  it  does  neither:  it  mnkcs 
more  criminals  than  it  crushes.  I  helievv  il  at 
the  methods  of  our  Juvenile  Court  could  be  applied 
to  half  the  criminal  cases  on  our  calendars.  The 
majority  of  our  criminals  are  not  born,  but  made 
—  and  ill-made.  They  can  be  re-made  as  easily 
as  the  "  River  Front  Gang"  was  rc-raaile  if  we  would 
use  the  methods  of  Christianity  on  them  and  not 
those  of  a  sort  of  fiendish  p(><^Lini.sin  thjit  cxm-ts 
"an  eye  for  an  eye,"  and  exacts  it  m  i  spirit  of 
vengeance. 

Does  this  read  as  if  I  were  "cm/.y"  ?  Do 
not  think  so.  It  b  a  conclusion  bused  upon 
years  of  thoughtful  experience.  I  have  obtained 
a  law  in  Colorado  —  the  first  of  its  kind  in  the 
history  of  jurisprudence,  if  that  be  anything  against 
it!  —  by  which  an  adult  accused  of  crime  can 
be  tried  as  our  children  are  tried  and  aided  and 
corrected  by  the  state  as  parens  patrioe,  just  as 
our  children  are  aided  and  corrected.  And  I 
am  willing  to  stake  my  faith  on  ft  that  if  our 
courts  and  our  prisons  ever  learn  how  to  work 
under  such  a  law,  you  will  see  not  only  children 
but  grown  men  and  women  going  from  the  court 
rooms  with  their  commitment  papers  in  their 
hands  and  knocking  en  the  gates  of  the  prisons 
tu  be  admitted.    Crazy?     When  I  first  told  one 


150 


THE  BEAST 


of  our  deputy  sheriffs  that  in  future  I  should  send 
boys  to  Golden  without  him,  he  said  to  my 
clerk:  "Well,  I've  always  heard  Lindsey  was 
crazy,  but  I  never  believed  it  till  to-day!"  And 
when  a  hardened  young  criminal  went,  from 
my  court,  250  miles  to  the  Buena  Vista  refor- 
matory alone,  and  presented  himself  at  the  gates 
of  the  prison,  "the  sentry"  (as  I  was  afterward 
told)  "almost  fell  off  the  walls."  Crazy?  Do 
you  know  that  over  half  the  inmates  of  reforma- 
tories, jails  and  prisons  in  this  country  are  under 
twenty-five  years  of  age?  (Some  authorities 
say  under  twenty-three.)  Do  you  know  that 
an  English  prison  commission  not  long  ago 
reported  to  Parliament  that  the  age  of  sixteen 
to  twenty  was  the  essentially  criminal  age?  Do 
you  know  that  the  Earl  of  Sh8f*'>sbury  after 
much  study  declared  that  not  tw  ■  out  of  any 
hundred  criminals  in  London  had  formed  the 
habits  that  led  to  criminality  aftei  the  twenti- 
eth year?  I  may  be  very  crazy  and  yet  not  be 
as  crazy  as  the  people  who  in  the  face  of  these 
facts  believe  that  the  criminal  methods  of  our 
civilization  are  anything  but  a  gigantic  crime 
and  a  stupendous  folly.  Some  day  our  descend- 
ants will  read  of  our  methods  of  handling  crimi- 
nals as  we  now  read  of  how  our  ancestors  impris- 
oned the  insane  in  chains  and  used  the  methods 
of  a  Siberian  jailer  on  the  inmates  of  the  mad- 
hou:>e!    Never  doubt  it.    Under  our  civil  laws 


AT  WORK  WITH  THE  CHILDREN    I5i 

lo-day  Masters  of  Discipline  could  be  appointed 
—as  Masters  in  Chancery  are  appointed  -  to 
aid  and  correct  delinquents,  especially  young 
delmquents,  in  our  cities;  to  allow  them  to  repent 
and  make  [reparation  -  as  they  cannot  under 
our  crunmal  procedure;  to  help  them  rise  from 
immorality  and  clean  their  hands  of  crime  —  as 
no  judge  can  help  them  now,  without  being  guilty 
of  compounding  a  felony."  That  will  come, 
some  day.  If  not  in  aur  day.  then  so  much  the 
worse  for  us! 

I  cannot  conclude  this  chapter  without  add- 
ing the  final  lesson  I  learned  in  our  work  with 
the  children -the   lesson    that   leads   me   back 
again  into  the  quarrel  with  the  Beast.     It  is  this- 
criminals  are  bom  and  crimmals  are  bred,  but 
the  conditions  of  which  they  are  bom  and  under 
which  they  are  bred  in  Denver  are  the  same  con- 
ditions that  debauch  our  Legislature,  our  judic- 
la^.  our  press,  our  business  life,  and  our  poor 
I  found  no  "problem  of  the  children"  that  was 
not    also    the    problem    of    their    parents.    The 
young  bud  was  blighted  by  the  same  cormption 
that  infected  the  twig,  killed  the  branch  and  ate 
out  the  heart  of  the  trunk.    The  rule  of  the  plu- 
tocracy in  Denver  was  the  cause  of  three-quar- 
ters of  the  crime  in  Denver.    The  dependent  and 
delmquent    children    who    came    into    my    court 
came  almost  wholly  from  the  homes  of  depend- 
ent and  delmquent  parents  who  were  made  such 


if 


.^'. 


152 


THE  BEAST 


!'■ 


by  the  hopeless  economic  conditions  of  their  lives; 
and  those  conditions  were  made  hopeless  by  the 
remorseless  tyranny  of  wealthy  men  who  used 
their  lawless  power  to  enslave  and  brutalize  and 
kill  then-  workmen.  Legislatures,  corrupted  by 
corporate  wealth,  refused  to  pass  the  eight-hour 
law  that  would  give  the  child's  home  a  parent 
able  to  fulfil  hi«  parental  duties  —  refused  to 
pass  the  employer's  liability  law  that  would  save 
the  widows  from  starvation  and  the  children 
from  the  streets  —  refused  to  pass  even  a  "three- 
fourths  jury"  law  that  would  allow  the  poor  vic- 
tim of  corporate  greed  to  ol>tain  a  little  pittance 
of  justice  in  the  courts.  The  saloons,  protected 
by  the  political  power  of  the  corporatitms,  de- 
bauched the  parents  and  destroyed  the  homes 
of  our  children,  and  the  protected  gambler  hunted 
and  preyed  with  the  protected  saloon.  I  could 
not  do  my  duty  toward  the  children  without 
attacking  the  conditions  that  deformed  the  lives 
of  the  children.  And  when  I  tried  to  do  this  — 
as  you  shall  see  — the  Beast  replied:  "Then 
you  shall  not  be  allowed  to  save  even  the  little 
children." 


CHAPTER  IX 


THE  BEA8T  AND  THE  BALLOT 


THESE  days  of  1902,  1903  and  1904  were 
the  heydays  of  our  Juvenile  Court,  and 
I  should  like  to  dwell  upon  them  fondly  —  as 
the  song  says  —  because  of  what  ensued.  Our 
campaigns  against  the  wine  rooms,  the  jails,  and 
the  grafting  Commissioners  had  made  the  court 
as  popular  as  a  prizefighter,  and  the  newspapers 
kept  it  constantly  in  the  public  eye.  The  Denver 
Chamber  of  Commerce  —  (let  me  boast  of  it !) 
— invited  me  to  luncheon,  gave  a  reception  in 
my  honour,  and  praised  me  to  the  last  blush. 
(This  is  the  same  Chamber  that  has  since  branded 
me  an  enemy  of  the  state.)  Philanthropic  men 
and  women  assisted  our  Juvenile  Improvement 
Association,  helped  with  our  charity  benefits, 
and  contributed  to  the  Fresh  Air  Fund,  the  sum- 
mer camp,  the  day  nursery,  and  other  branches 
of  our  work,  with  all  the  delighted  eagerness  of 
Lady  Bountiful  herself.  (At  a  recent  "bene- 
fit" given  in  the  aid  of  the  Juvenile  Court  by  Miss 
Olga  Nethersole  there  were  not  two  hundred 
persons  in  the  whole  house;  and  "Society"  was 
conspicuously  elsewhere.)     Mr.  Walter  S.  Chees- 


154 


THE  BEA9T 


man,  pre^dent  of  the  water  company,  was  at  the 
head  of  ojir  Association,  and  if  we  needed  money 
we  had  only  to  ask  for  it.  (Thus  is  the  same 
Walter  S.  Cheesman  who  afterward  lent  a  vacant 
lot  to  a  charity  bazaar  on  condition  that  not  a 
penny  of  the  proceeds  should  go  to  the  Juvenile 
Court  work.)  I  was  elected  chairman  of  a 
buikling  committee  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  (from  which 
I  afterward  resigned  .vhen  I  found  that  my 
chairmanship  hindered  the  work  of  raising  money 
for  the  Association).  I  was  made  a  member  of 
the  Board  of  Tru.>»tees  of  the  Denver  University. 
(And  Miss  Ida  Tarbell  could  not  have  been 
removed  from  the  Board  of  Rockefeller's  Chicago 
college  more  shrewdly  and  softly  than  I  was 
"transferred"  from  the  Denver  University  Board 
when  the  days  of  my  offence  against  the  "  inter- 
ests" developed.)  In  short.  I  was  receiving  the 
.same  applause  in  Denver  that  Heney  received 
in  San  Francisco  before  he  turned  from  prose- 
outing  grafters  to  prosecuting  the  big  business  men 
and  "leading  citizens"  who  mads  the  grafters. 

I  had  as  yet  done  only  one  thing  to  offend  busi- 
ness: that  was  the  enforcement  of  the  child-labour 
laws  in  1902.  Cotton  mills  had  been  established 
just  outside  of  Denver,  and  poor  families  had 
been  imported  from  Alabama  and  the  Caroli- 
nas  to  work  as  operatives.  I  went  through  the 
factories,  visited  the  homes  and  talked  with  the 
children ;  and  I  found  that  the  awful  labour  con- 


M 


THE  BEAST  AND  THE  BALLOT     155 

ditions  of  the  Southern  cotton  mills  had  been 
transplanted  to  Colorado.  The  workers  were 
practically  slaves,  for  they  had  been  imported 
under  contract  and  had  assigned  part  of  their 
wages,  in  advance,  to  pay  for  transportation; 
and  boys  and  girls  from  ten  to  twelve  years  of 
age  were  at  work  in  the  mills,  without  education 
and  subject  to  the  temptations  of  bad  moral  con- 
dkions,  trying  to  help  free  their  parents  from  the 
bondage  of  debt. 

We  took  proceedings  against  the  company  — 
in  spite  of  an  outcry  that  we  were  interfering  with 
a  prosperous  industry  that  added  to  the  wealth 
of  the  state  —  and  we  fined  the  owners  and  the 
superintendent  the  limit  allowed  by  the  law. 
One  of  the  men  of  wealth  interested  in  the  mills 
came  to  my  chambers  and  protested.  He  had 
lived  in  the  community  a  good  many  years,  he 
said,  and  he  was  no  criminal.  It  was  all  ri^t  to 
fine  the  superintendent;  the  superintendent  was 
reaponsible  for  the  conditions  at  the  mills.  But 
it  was  all  wrong  to  fine  him,  the  owner;  for  he 
had  a  reputation  and  a  good  name  and  he  did 
not  propose  to  be  branded  a  criminal.  "We 
have  never  had  any  trouble,"  he  said,  "until  this 
fight  started.  We're  helping  Denver,  and  we 
ought  to  be  encouraged  instead  of  being  perse- 
cuted. I  warn  you,  right  now,  that  if  this  thing 
b  kept  up,  we'll  shut  down  the  mills  and  you'll 
have  to  take  the  consequences." 


(]"■ 


^m 


I«6  THE  BEAST 

The  thbg  was  kept  up.  The  children  were 
forced  to  go  to  school.  The  mill  shut'  down. 
And  I  became  "an  enemy  of  prosperity"  —  pros- 
perity foimded  upon  the  slavery  of  children  and 
the  stunting  of  young  lives. 

The  child-labour  problem  is  a  problem  of  the 
Beast.  If  you,  who  read  this,  live  in  a  city  or  a 
state  where  the  mil!  and  the  factory  are  enslav- 
ing helpless  little  children,  understand  that  these 
children  are  the  victims  of  the  Beast.  It  lives  upon 
them.    You  must  fight  it,  if  you  would  save  them. 

We  have  had  no  child-labour  problem  in  Denver 
since;  but  our  work  in  ridding  the  city  of  it  did 
not  weigh  heavily  against  the  court,  for  the  loss 
of  the  mills  was  not  great  enough  to  be  offensive. 
The  court  continued  to  be  popular;  the  politicians 
were  aware  of  its  popularity;  they  decided  that 
its  popularity  would  be  a  valuable  political  asset; 
and  as  I  approached  the  end  of  my  term  of 
office,  I  was  met  by  various  advances  on  the 
part  of  those  Democratic  "leaders"  who  had 
so  indignantly  shunned  and  repudiated  me  at 
the  time  of  the  printing-steal  exposures.  I  had, 
however,  learned  to  be  suspicious  of  politicians, 
especially  "when  they  come  bearing  gifts."  And 
I  soon  learned  that  the  gift  they  offered  me  b 
this  instance  was  a  "gold  brick."  Let  me  explain 
how  I  learned  it. 

My  experience  on  the  bench  and  in  politics 
has  convinced  me  that  the  confessional  fulfils  a 


THE  BEAST  AND  THE  BALLOT  157 
need  of  humanity  that  is  almost  as  mstinctive  as 
the  need  of  religion  itself.  I  have  found  that 
among  young  criminals  the  desire  to  "snitch" 
on  themselves  is  practically  irresistible;  on  the 
slightest  encouragement  they  blurt  out  the  truth 
as  if  their  tongues  spoke  m  spite  of  them.  Strang- 
est of  all,  the  "bad"  politicians,  like  the  "bad" 
boys,  have  come  to  my  chambers  in  scores,  even 
while  they  were  publicly  fighting  me,  and  confessed 
their  crimes  (sometimes  before  they  committed 
them!)  with  a  pitiful  eagerness  that  would  soften 
the  heart  of  the  bitterest  cynic  who  ever  sneered 
at  human  frailty. 

(The  Heart  could  make  them  do  its  work,  but 
it  could  not  make  then  wholly  bestial.  There 
always  remained  in  them  some  generous  relent- 
ance  that  made  than  betray  their  faith  with 
injustice.  And  in  all  the  attacks  that  have  been 
made  upon  me.  in  this  curious  struggle  with  the 
System,  there  has  scarcely  been  a  blow  aimed  at 
me  of  which  I  have  not  been  forewarned.  That, 
too,  b  one  of  the  experiences  of  my  life  that  has 
made  me  always  hope.) 

While  I  was  in  forced  retirement  politically  — 
because  of  my  exposure  of  the  grafting  County 
Commissioners  —  I  was  kept  constantly  informed 
of  the  secrets  of  the  System  by  these  confessions 
of  the  System's  tools.  I  was  informed,  particu- 
larly, of  the  way  elections  were  managed  so  as 
to  keep  the  Beast  in  power. 


w 


158  THE  BEAST 

Under  the  law,  as  we  had  it  then,  the  County 
Clerk  appointed  the  deputy  clerks  before  whom 
the  proapective  voter  appeared  to  have  his  nam* 
registered  on  the  voters'  lists:  and  the  applictkat 
had  to  bring  with  him  two  witnesses  to  swear 
that  he  had  a  legal  right  to  vote.  Well  and  good! 
His  name  was  dulj  entered  on  a  sheet  of  paper, 
and  these  sheets  weiv  returned  from  the  various 
wards  to  the  Clerk  s  oflSce,  there  to  be  copied 
into  the  registral-  <n  books.  But  the*  the  orig- 
inal sheets  were  f  ostroyed;  there  was  no  way 
of  tracing  a  fraudulent  registration  back  to  the 
clerk  who  had  made  it;  and  these  clerks,  at  the 
bidding  of  the  men  who  appointed  them,  turned 
in  sheets  of  "phony"  names  copied  from  the 
pages  of  directories  from  Omaha  and  Kansas 
City  (for  example)  and  kept  a  list"  of  such  names 
for  use  on  election  day. 

On  election  day,  the  election  "judges"  — 
appointed,  to  guard  the  ballot-boxes,  by  the  same 
men  who  lo\\"ered  the  assessments  and  rebated  the 
taxes  of  the  corporations  —  were  given  the  lists  of 
"phony"  names  registered  in  their  precincts;  and 
the  judges  would  check  off  the  fraudulent  names 
on  their  poll  books,  and  for  each  name  deposit 
a  ballot  in  the  ballot  box  in  support  of  the  System! 
Could  anything  be  simpler?  Certainly  nothing 
of  the  sort  was  ever  more  barefaced.  I  have 
seen  typewritten  lists  of  these  "phony"  names 
that  were  made  out  at  the  Democratic  Club  and 


THE  BEAST  AND  THE  BALLOT     159 

furnished  to  the  Democratic  workers,  so  that  'no 
election  judge  might  make  the  mistake  of  deposit- 
ing a  ballot  for  any  voter  who  might  later 
appear  at  the  polls  to  vote  for  himself. 

One  day  one  of  the  county  clerks  of  this  period 
came  to  my  chambers  and  said:  "Ben,  I  don't 
know  what  I'm  going  to  do  about  the  lists  of  names 
that  are  coming  in  from  the  lower  wards.  They 
are  bringing  in  thousand  of  names  that  I  know 
are  false."  I  advised  him  to  refuse  the  names 
and  expose  the  fiaud.  He  did  not  do  it.  He 
has  told  me,  since,  that  he  tried  to  stand  out, 
but  the  organization  forced  him  to  give  way. 
He  got  his  reward! 

Long  afterward,  Mr.  "Jim"  Williams,  a  polit- 
ical henchman  of  Wm.  G.  Evans,  president 
of  the  tramway  company,  confessed  to  me: 
"Judge,  it's  really  a  shame  when  the  thing  gets 
as  raw  as  it  was  that  year.  Why,  one  night,  before 
that  election,  I  carried  $20,000  down  to  the  Demo- 
cratic Club  and  I  sat  there  around  a  table  with 
Bill  Davoren  and  Tom  Phillips,  with  a  bottle 
of  whiskey  between  them,  and  dickered  about  how 
much  we  ought  to  pay  per  majority  per  precinct!" 
.Vnd  observe  that  the  henchman  of  Evans,  then 
"Republican  "boss,  supplies  the  Democratic  ward 
healers  with  the  money  necessary  to  obtain  frau- 
dulent majorities  for  the  "Democratic"  ticket. 
(The  Beast  is  bi-partisan !) 

The  result  was  that  in  one  of  the  precincts  of 


Li'; 


160 


THE  BEAST 


i  I 


a  ward  of  which  " Billy"  Green*  was  the  " leader," 
the  election  returns  showed  717  votes  for  the 
straight  Democratic  ticket  and  9  votes  for  its 
opponents.  The  precinct,  as  everybody  knew, 
did  not  have  more  than  perhaps  a  hundred  legal 
voters.  And  on  one  election  night,  when  the  returns 
were  being  announced,  I  stood  outside  a  news- 
paper oflSce  and  saw  such  returns,  from  "Billy" 
Green's  ward,  received  by  the  crowd  with  shouts 
of  laughter.  A  heart-ticklmg  joke!  And  the 
people  who  applauded  it  were  being  plundered 
of  the  money  that  bought  this  laughable  ma- 
jority! 

Did  these  people  know  it?  Certainly  not. 
They  did  not  see  the  cat.  I  did  not  see  it  myself 
m  this  matter  in  those  days.  I  thought  the  little 
"bosses,"  like  Frank  Adams  of  the  Police  Board, 
were  alone  responsible  for  the  election  frauds; 
and  when  the  Honest  Election  League  was  formed 
and  I  was  invited  by  the  League  to  address  mass 
meetings,  I  attacked  the  little  "bosses"  and  the 
successors  of  the  County  Commissioners,  and 
"bawled  them  out"  amid  the  hisses  and  threats 
of  their  friends  —  threats  that  were  made  with 
the  clenched  fist  brandished  in  my  face.  It  was 
exciting  work,  bnt  it  was  wasted.  The  Beast 
must  have  grinned  like  a  Cheshire  cat  as  it  lis- 
tened to  me. 

The  other  speakers  of  the  League  —  with  the  one 

*Greeo  ia  now  a  city  detective  in  Denver. 


THE  REAST  AND  THE  BALLOT     161 

exception  of  Father  Wm.  O'Ryan  —  blamed  the 
mere  tools  who  stuffed  the  ballot  boxes,  an  associ- 
ation of  Democratic  ward-heelers  called  "the 
Savages."  They  blamed  the  Savages  as  the 
Kjjod  citizen  of  New  York  blames  Tammany 
Hall.  I  knew  a  number  of  these  Savages  well- 
I  had  worked  with  them  in  the  ranks  of  the 
Democratic  party;  and  I  knew  that  they  had  been 
corrupted  by  the  political  conditions,  and  that 
they  had  in  them  qualities  of  daring  loyalty 
and  unselfishness  of  which  their  en  f.loyers  had 
no  trace.  They  would  have  followed  honest 
leaders  as  unflinchingly  as  they  followed  these 
corrupt  ones. 

And  the  corrupt  ones  were  not  only  corrupt- 
they  were  so  greedily  selfish  that  they  had  not 
even  the  human  loyalty  f„r  l!,e  Savages  that 
the  poor  Savages  had  for  them.  Note  what 
they  did: 

^^  In  the  spring  and  lall  of  1903  were  held  the 
"charter  elections"  in  Denver,  by  which  the 
city  and  county  of  Denver  were  to  be  given  a 
new  instrument  of  consolidation ;  and  under  this 
charter  the  powers  of  the  utility  corporations 
were  to  be  largely  limited  and  the  rights  of  the 
people  protected.  The  corporations,  through  the 
agency  of  the  Democratic  machine,  defeated  the 
charter  drawn  up  by  the  honest-charter  conven- 
tion, elected  a  convention  that  was  more  to  their 
taste  and   obUined   a   charter   that   gave   them 


MldlOCOrY   MIOIUTION   TIST  CH*«T 

(ANSI  and  ISO  TEST  CHART  No.  2| 


^1^1^ 


^  APPLIED  \M/\BE     In 

^=^  16^3  East  Main  Street 

S^S  Roc^esl«^,   Ne*   York         U609        USA 

rJSS  (716)  483  -  0300  -  Phone 

^5  (716)  2U-S9B9-Fax 


162 


THE  BEAST 


more  power  than  ever.  In  this  campaign  the 
election  frauds  were  most  open.  "AMiat  chance 
have  youse  people  got?"  one  of  the  Savages 
asked  me.  "Boss  Evans  and  his  crowd  has  fel- 
lows like  me,  good  for  500  votes  in  a  precinct, 
when  fellows  like  you  is  only  good  for  one  vote. 
What  show  have  youse  got?"  A  watcher  for 
the  Honest  Election  League  was  thrown  out  of 
a  polling  booth  by  the  Savages,  and  when  an 
attorney  for  the  League  threatened  the  election 
judge  with  arrest  and  a  sentence  m  jail,  the  bal- 
lot-box stuifer  replied:  "I  don't  care  a  damn 
for  your  district  court.  We'll  take  it  to  the 
Supreme  Court,  and  then  you'll  see  what  hap- 
pens." As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  League  prose- 
cuted in  the  district  court  but  the  case  was 
appealed  to  the  Supreme  Court  and  the  ballot- 
box  stuff er  won. 

Similarly,  in  the  elections  of  the  spring  of 
1904,  the  utility  corporations  used  the  Demo- 
cratic machine  and  the  Savages  to  elect  our  old 
friend  Robert  W.  Speer  mayor  of  Denver,  along 
with  a  Democratic  ticket;  and,  according  to  the 
confessions  of  the  agents  of  corruption  them- 
selves, there  were  10,000  fraudulent  votes  counted 
at  the  polls.  But  six  months  later,  in  the  fall  of 
this  same  year  1904,  the  corporations  for  their 
own  purposes  wished  to  elect  a  Republican  ticket 
in  the  city  and  the  state;  and  the  Democratic 
Savages    were   warned    by    their   leaders  —  par- 


THE  BEAST  AND  THE  BALLOT     163 

ticularly    by   the   mayor,    Robert    W.    Speer  — 
that  they  must  not  stuff  the  ballot  boxes.     They 
did  not  obey  the  voice  of   their   master.     They 
did.  for  themselves,  what  they  had  so  often  done 
for  the  corporations  —  although  the  frauds  were 
not  as  great  as  usual  —  and  they  succeeded  in 
electing  the  Democratic  ticket  in  the  city.     Court 
proceedings  were  at  once  begun   against  them, 
and  by  an  unprecedented  use  of  the  Supreme 
Court  they  were  sent  to  jail.     I  went  to  them 
^ere  and  sat  in  their  cells  and  talked  with  them. 
Their    indignation    was    almost    tearful.     They 
were   like   a   family   of   "bad"   boys   who   had 
been  taught  by  their  father  to  steal  for  him  and 
had  been  handed  over  to  the  police  by  their  unna- 
tural   parent    when    they    stole    for    themselves! 
And  the  blind  public  rejoiced  in  their  punish- 
ment and  degradation!    And  the  Supreme  Court 
handed    over   to   the    corporations    the   "swag" 
which  the  young  thieves  had  tried  to  keep  for 
themselves! 

This,  however,  is  by  the  way  and  in  advance 
of  my  story.  The  point  I  wish  to  make  is  merely 
that  I  knew  the  ballot  boxes  were  being  stuffed 
and  knew  how  successfully  it  could  be  done. 
I  knew  too  that  in  my  previous  campaign  the 
Democratic  machine  had  used  frauds  in  an 
attempt  to  defeat  me.  One  of  the  Savages  had 
confessed  to  me  that  in  his  district,  when  the 
ballots  were  being  counted,  hundreds  of  straight 


164 


THE  BEAST 


Democratic  votes  had  been  "scratched"  agamst 
me  by  the  Democratic  election  judges  who  marked 
a  cross  against  the  name  of  my  Republican  oppo- 
nent. If  that  had  been  done  when  I  was  a  com- 
paratively moffensive  opponent  of  the  System, 
what  would  they  not  do  now,  after  my  four  years 
of  "grand-stand"  plays  and  exposures?  I  knew 
what  they  would  do.  They  would  put  me  on 
the  Democratic  ticket  —  because  they  wished 
to  use  popularity  of  the  Juvenile  Court  in  support 
of  the  ticket  —  and  then  would  "scratch"  and 
"stuff"  to  defeat  me.  Their  nomination  was 
the  gift  they  offered  me;  and  it  was  the  gift  I 
feared. 

I  decided  that  I  would  not  accept  their  nomi- 
nation alone.  The  Juvenile  Court  had  been 
helped  by  citizens  of  all  political  parties,  and 
there  was  no  reason  why  I  should  make  a  par- 
tisan campaign  for  re-election.  Moreover,  the 
Republican  organization  had  been  deserted  by 
the  public  utility  corporations,  for  the  time,  and  a 
number  of  young  reformers  had  seized  it  and 
hauled  down  the  skull-and-cross-bones.  Several 
were  old  and  close  friends  whom  I  had  known  since 
my  schooldays.  All  were  favourable  to  my  candi- 
dacy; and,  though  I  did  not  believe  I  could  be 
elected  on  the  Republican  ticket  alone,  I  knew 
I  could  be  nominated  on  it.  I  was  even  offered 
the  Republican  nomination  for  the  mayoralty, 
privately,  by  Mr.  John  W.  Springer,  and  1V&. 


THE  BEAST  AND  THE  BALLOT  165 
Greeley  W.  WhUford.  in  the  office  of  the  Conti- 
nental Trust  Company,  before  Mr.  Sprbger  had 
accepted  that  nomination  himself;  and  I  refused 
It  because  my  work  was  in  the  Juvenile  Court 
and  I  did  not  wish  to  abandon  that.  But  Mr 
Springer  was  fighting  Evans;  and  I  agreed  that 
If  the  Republicans  endorsed  my  candidacy  for 
the  judgeship  I  should  accept  their  support,  so 
that  the  popularity  of  the  Juvenile  Court  might 
not  be  wholly  an  asset  of  the  Evans  Democratic 
ticket. 

I  made  my  decision  known  to  my  friends,  and 
immediately  I  received  an  anxious  visit  from  Harry 
A.  Lindsley,  the  District  Attorney  who  served 
the  Beast  so  faithfully  while  he  was  m  office 
He  took  me  out  to  luncheon,  and  for  two  hours' 
he  laboured  with  me  eloquently  over  the  restau- 
l^^}u^^'  ^  registrafon,   he  assured  me. 

had  been  fixed  tor  the  Democratic  party  to  win 
and  if  I  did  not  agree  to  take  the  Democratic 
nommation,  and  refuse  any  other,  I  would  go 
dowi}  to  defeat  inevitably.  Worse  than  that- 
once  out  of  the  Juvenile  Court,  I  would  find 
that  I  could  not  make  a  living  in  Denver  with 
the  insulted  Powers  against  me.  "You'll  not 
be  able  to  make  a  hundred  dollars  a  month," 
he  said.  He  named  lawyers  who,  as  I  knew, 
had  failed  in  Denver  because  they  had  fought 
the  System;  they  had  been  unable  to  get  any  big 
cases  to  handle,  because  the  corporations  would 


I 
I 

fli 


166 


THE  BEAST 


give  them  none;  and  they  had  been  unrble  to  win 
even  their  little  cases,  because  the  corporation 
judges  were  against  them.  He  painted  a  vivid 
picture  of  me,  shabby,  soured,  and  a  failure  in 
life;  and  I  knew,  from  my  own  observation, 
that  the  picture  was  not  overdrawn.  Some  of 
the  most  '  ~  ^est  and  promising  young  men  in 
Denver  have  been  driven  from  us  in  just  such  a 
state  of  crestfallen  destitution. 

However,  I  knew  all  this  before  Lindsley  told 
it  to  me,  and  the  scarecrow  had  lost  its  terrors. 
I  told  him  I  would  not  refuse  the  support  of  any 
party.  My  court  was  non-partisan  and  I  pro- 
posed to  make  its  judge  the  same. 

Next  came  a  visit  in  my  chambers  from  Earl 
Hewitt,*  a  "fixer"  and  "man-Friday"  of  Robert 
W.  Speer'  and  after  he  had  shut  and  locked  my 
door,  he  drew  from  his  pocket  —  so  to  speak  — 
a  gold  brick  of  a  peculiarly  winning  glitter.  If 
I  would  promise  to  accept  a  Democratic  nomi- 
nation for  the  judgeship  and  refuse  the  Republican 
nomination,  and  support  Speer  for  the  mayoralty, 
the  Democrats  would  elect  me  Governor  of  Colo- 
rado in  the  fall!  I  must  have  looked  dubious 
(though  I  tried  not  to)  for  he  used  all  the  elo- 
quence of  a  horse  trader  in  order  to  persuade 
me.  He  succeeded  in  convincing  me  that  the 
trap  was  set  and  sure,  since  the  bait  was  so  large 
and  alluring.    And  after  he  had  gone  I  wrote  a 

•Hewitt  is  now  a  member  of  the  Fire  and  Police  Board  in  Denver. 


THE  BEAST  AND  THE  BALLOT     167 

letter  to  the  newspapers  refusing  to  bind  myself 
to  the  Democratic  party  and  announcing  myself 
as  a  non-partisan  candidate  for  re-election  to  a 
non-partisan  court. 

"You  have  signed  your  political  death  war- 
rant," a  friend  assured  me;  and  I  believer  that 
he  was  right.  A  friendly  ex-governor  had  v/ritten 
me  a  letter  to  the  same  effect.  Milton  Smith 
and  "Bill"  Davoren  and  all  the  other  agents  of 
the  Beast  saw  my  "finish."  I  saw  it  myself. 
But  I  was  resolved  to  meet  it  on  my  feet  and 
fighting. 

The  women  rallied  first.  Mrs  J.  B.  Belford, 
Mrs.  Sarah  Piatt  Decker  and  Mrs  M.  A.  B.' 
Conine  of  the  Woman's  Club,  organized  indigna- 
tion meetings,  protesting  against  the  opposition 
of  the  Democratic  machine  to  my  renomination ; 
and  the  newspapers  spread  reports  of  the  pro- 
test, written  effectively  by  such  able  newspaper 
women  as  "Polly  Pry"  and  Winifred  Black  and 
Ellis  Meredith.  The  pulpits  took  it  up.  The 
newsboys  began  to  parade  the  streets  shouting: 

"Who,  which,  when? 
Wish  we  were  men. 
So  we  could  vole  for  our  little  Ben." 

(And  for  the  first  time  in  my  life  I  found  it  an 
advantage  to  be  "five-foot-six"  and  weigh  ninety- 
eight  pounds!)  The  Democratic  leaders  began 
to  fear  that  if  the  Republicans  nominated  me  and 
the  Democrats  did  not,  the  women  would  vote 


:!  ! 


I  i 


I'^^l 


^iiii 


168 


THE  BEAST 


the  straight  Republican  ticket,  in  their  blind 
resentment,  and  turn  the  whole  election.  The 
children  marched  and  countermarched  with  songs 
and  banners,  and  even  mobbed  the  doors  of  the 
Democratic    Club    with     insults    and    cat-calls. 

"Little  ,"    a    Democratic    "leader,"  said, 

"They're  stirring  up  the  whole  town!"  A  pro- 
fessional politician  is  as  cowardly  as  a  gambler 
is  superstitious.  When  the  Democratic  conven- 
tion met,  I  did  not  attend  but  I  wrs  nominated. 

I  was  nominated  —  but  not  for  love.  A  Demo- 
cratic candidate,  named  Robert  J.  Byrne,  went 
to  one  of  the  young  Republican  "leaders"  and 
said:  "We  had  to  nominate  Lindsey  because 
we  thought  you  people  were  going  to.  But  if 
you'll  put  up  a  Republican,  we'll  support  him 
and  bury  Lindsey  so  deep  he'll  never  be  heard 
of  again."  Other  Democrats  made  the  same 
proposal  to  other  Republicans.  And  we  felt  it 
necessary  to  hold  a  mass  meeting,  to  give  the 
reform  Republicans  the  moral  support  of  some 
public  enthusiasm.  We  met  in  the  opera  house, 
under  the  auspices  of  the  leading  women  of  Den- 
ver; and  Father  Wm.  O'Ryan,  Rabbi  Wm.  S. 
Friedman  and  Rev.  John  H.  Houghton  spoke  in 
behalf  of  my  candidacy.  In  the  midst  of  the 
enthusiasm  the  news  was  brought  that  the  Repub- 
licans had  nominated  me;  and  we  adjourned 
with  cheers. 

My  election  was  assured.    There  was  no  doubt 


THE  BEAST  A.,D  THE  BALLOT    169 

of  it.  It  was  impossible  to  defeat  me.  But  I 
knew  another  fact  that  was  equally  assured, 
namely,  that  my  election  would  .^e  declared  void 
by  the  courts.  I  did  not  join  in  the  cheering. 
You  see,  those  elections  were  held  under  the 
new  charter  consolidating  the  city  and  county  of 
Denver.  The  charter  provided  for  the  election 
of  two  county  judges;  but  the  constitutional 
amendment  that  had  provided  for  a  convention 
to  draw  up  the  charter,  had  particularly  prohib- 
ited the  convention  from  providing  for  the  elec- 
tion of  such  judges.  These  judges  should  have 
been  elected  under  the  state  statutes,  as  they  had 
been  previously.  The  charter  convention  knew 
it.  I  knew  it,  and  I  had  written  to  members  of 
the  convention  about  it.  But  the  System  had  seen 
an  opportunity  to  get  rid  of  me.  "Let's  mix  it 
up,"  I  was  told  that  one  of  the  Democratic  bosses 
had  said.  "We'll  see  if  we  can't  drop  the  little 
devil  in  the  shuffle."  If  I  were  elected  and  my 
election  declared  void,  the  County  Commission- 
ers, under  the  law,  would  have  the  right  to  name 
a  judge  to  take  my  place;  but  there  was  nothing 
for  me  to  do  but  go  ahead  with  them  and  try  to 
provide  tliat  after  the  "shuffle"  they  should  find 
me  on  top! 


!   II 


CHAPTER  X 


I     1  1 


lii  :i 


THE  BEAST  AND  THE   BALLOT  (CONTINUED) 

ANEW  EngJand  philosopher  has  said  that 
the  great  virtue  of  a  college  education  is 
to  teach  a  man  how  unavailing  it  is.  T  have  never 
been  taugh'  that.  I  have  always  had  an  envy  of 
those  men  who  have  been  able  to  live  four  years 
of  their  youth  among  the  ideals  of  a  university, 
protected  from  the  disillusionment^  of  the  world, 
novitiates  of  culture  and  the  liberal  mind,  happy 
among  the  boyish  comradeships  of  the  lecture 
room  and  campus.  It  had  always  seemed  to  me 
that  my  life  had  1  sen  spiritually  orphaned  by 
this  Ijss  of  an  alma  mater.  And  when  —  ust 
after  my  re-election  in  the  spring  of  1904  —  the 
Denver  University,  through  its  chancellor,  the 
Reverend  Henry  Augustus  Buchtel,  ofiFtred  to 
confer  an  ''onorary  degree  upon  me,  I  I'elt  as 
humbly  flattered  a^  if  I  were  a  quondam  street 
waif  whom  some  almost  noble  family  now  wished 
to  adopt.  (Intellectual  snobbery  ?  No  doubt  of  it !) 
On  the  night  that  my  degree  was  to  be  conferred 
upon  me  I  went  proudly  to  the  Commencement 
exercises  in  the  Trinity  Methodist  Church.  Mr. 
W.  G.  Evans,  president  of  the  tramway  company, 

170 


171 


THE  BEAST  AND  THE  BALLOT 

had  been  showing  a  new  inlercst  in  the  Juvenile 
Court  and  l-.H  sent  me  wonl,  through  a  friend, 
at  he  thougiit  rny  work  for  the  chil.'ren  ought 
to  be  publrdy  recognized  by  the  university.     I 
knew  that  the  university  hod  ),ee,  founded  by 
Mr  Kvans's  father,  and  tha,    ^fr.  Evans  himself 
had  assisted  it  with  large  and  frequent  contribu- 
tions     I  knew  that  Dean  Shattuck  of  the  univer- 
sity had  been  a  household  friend  of  Mr    Evans 
and  his  family,  that  he  had  been  elwted  a  mem- 
ber of  the  charter  convention  that  betrayed  th  • 
city  to   the  corporations,   and   that   he   had   not 
opposed  the  betrayal.     But  all  this  meant  nothing 
to  me.     The  college  had  remained  in  my  thought 
somethmg    as    unworldly    as    a    convent.     The 
Honourable  Henry  M.  Teller  was  to  receive  an 
honorary  degree  with  me;   and  there  was  nothing 
.i-t  pride  m  my  heart  as  I  walked  up  the  aisle 
of    Trinity    Church,    with    Senator    Teller   and 
Chancellor   Buchtel.    to   the    raised  platform  on 
which  I  was  to  receive  my   patent  of  intellectual 
nobility. 

The  church,  of  course,  was  crowded  -  crowded 
with  the  young  men  and  women  of  the  college  and 
their  fond  parents.  I  looked  at  them  from  the 
platform  ai.  i  saw  their  happiness,  and  knew — 
better  than  they  did  -  their  good  fortune,  and 
thought  of  the  little  waifs  of  our  Juvenile  Court, 
and  was  glad  that  here,  at  least,  youth  was  what 
It  ought  to  be.     They  looKcd  up  at  me,  and  I 


17t 


THE  BEAST 


l!i 


was  proud  to  be  there,  honoured  among  them  and 
raised  in  their  innocent  estimation  by  an  aca- 
demic distinction.  The  chancellor,  in  his  address, 
was  eloquent  in  his  praise  of  our  court;  he  made 
me  blush  till  I  could  scarcely  see.  "If  Christ 
came  to  Denver,"  he  said,  "lie  would  go  straight 
to  your  court;  for  there  you  are  doing  the  Mas- 
ter's work."  He  put  my  precious  diploma  in  my 
hand,  and  I  sat  down  with  tears  in  my  eyes,  amid 
the  generous  applause  of  all  those  enviable  young 
people.  I  felt  that  I  had  never  been  happier, 
never  been  more  fortunate,  never  been  more 
honoured  —  and  never  could  be. 

While  I  was  still  blinking,  in  a  flattered  daze, 
a  message  was  brought  to  me  from  Milton  Smith 
written  on  a  calling  card;  he  wished  to  see  me 
after  the  meeting,  on  a  matter  of  great  import- 
ance; and  I  came  back  to  earth  and  politics  with 
a  chill  shock.  He  was  the  ^lairman  of  the  Demo- 
cratic State  Central  Committee.  It  was  he,  you 
remember,  who  carried  the  case  of  Cronin,  the 
dive  keeper,  to  the  Supreme  Court  in  Washing- 
ton. He  was  attorney  for  the  telephone  company 
and  its  associated  corporations.  I  wished  him 
at  the  ends  of  the  earth. 

I  suspected  what  he  wished  to  see  me  about. 
The  Democrats,  with  the  assistance  of  Wm.  G. 
Evans,  the  Republican  Boss,  had  elected  Demo- 
cratic Boss  Speer  and  his  ticket;  but  the  elec- 
tion frauds  had  been  so  gross  and  palpable  that 


THE  BEAST  AND  THE  BALLOT     173 

the  RepuL Means  and  their  majoralty  candidate, 
Ivlr.  John  W.  Springer,  had  filed  suit  in  my  court, 
contesting  the  election.  TL  matter  was  to  come 
up,  on  the  morrow,  on  a  motion  to  appoint  watch- 
ers for  the  sealed  ballot  boxes.  I  guessed  that 
Milton  Smith  wished  to  see  me  about  this.  I 
wondered,  for  a  moment,  what  he  could  have  to 
say  to  me;  and  then  my  eyes  returned  to  the 
young  gradu;  '"s  who  were  receiving  their  degrees 
at  the  threshold  of  their  college,  with  their  faces 
to  the  unknown  world  out  of  which  I  had  been 
momentarily  uplifted;  and  I  forgot  Cronin's 
attorney  m  the  spectacle  of  hope  and  youthful 
innocence  beginning  its  ireer,  like  a  bride  turn- 
ing from  the  alter  —  oii  the  arm  of  an  old  rake! 
Would  she  reform  him  ?    I  wondered. 

Milton  Smith  was  waiting  for  me,  'ith  a  young 
man  whom  I  shall  leave  nameless  oecause  he 
was,  I  believe,  a  guiltless  participant  in  what  fol- 
lowed). They  were  waiting  for  me  with  a  closed 
cab;  for  a  thunderstorm  had  broken  over  the  city 
and  the  rain  was  coming  down  as  if  the  skies  had 
burst.  They  invited  Senator  Teller  and  his  wife 
into  the  carriage,  and  we  drove  first  to  Teller's 
home  —  a  few  blocks  away  —  and  nothing 
passed  between  us  but  congratulations  on  our 
academic  honours  and  condemnations  of  the 
weather  that  had  made  such  a  sodden  ending 
for  the  young  people's  Commencement. 

But  when  the  Tellers  had  left  us  —  and  I  sat 


!'l 


174 


THE  BEAST 


i     i 


\vl     i  t 


back  with  my  precious  degree  buttoned  up  in  my 
breast  pocket  —  Smith  suddenly  began:  "Ben, 
we  thought  you  wouldn't  care  to  try  those  elec- 
tion cases."  "Why?"  I  said,  surprised.  "Well 
now,"  he  replied,  "I'll  tell  you.  You  ran  for 
election  yourself,  didn't  you?"  "I  ran,"  I  an- 
swered, "on  both  tickets."  "Yes,"  he  said,  "but 
we  don't  want  to  embarrass  you.  There's  no  need 
for  you  to  take  the  responsibility  of  deciding  about 
electi"ns  in  which  you  ran  yourself.  We  feci 
that  everybody  would  be  better  satisfied  if  you 
called  in  an  outside  judge."  I  asked:  "Who, 
for  instance?"  He  named  a  judge  who  has  since 
become  a  notorious  party  crook. 

The  thunder  was  battering  down  the  heavens 
overhead,  with  flashes  of  lightning  and  torrents 
of  rain.  The  carriage  splashed  and  jolted  through 
the  intermittent  darkness.  Milton  Smith  insinu- 
ated his  way  persuasively  into  his  proposition 
that  I  should  "job"  the  election  cases  for  Boss 
Evans  and  his  Democratic  agents;  and  I  won- 
dered whether  there  was  any  mark  of  the  Beast 
on  the  diploma  that  I  had  been  so  absurdly  proud 
of  a  half-hour  before. 

They  did  not  doubt  my  honesty,  he  said,  but 
they  were  afraid  that  I  was  prejudiced,  perhaps. 
I  had  been  addressing  mass  meetings  on  the  sub- 
ject of  ballot-box  frauds;  I  had  been  a  good  deal 
wrought  up,  it  seemed;  I  might  not  be  as  impar- 
tial as  I  ought  to  be.    Besides,  I  ought  to  know 


THE  BEAST  AND  THE  BALLOT     175 

what  election  cases  were:  both  sides  generally 
were  equally  guilty,  and  a  judge  was  expected 
to  stay  with  his  party.  They  were  afraid  that  I 
was  squeamish.  If  I  granted  the  Kepublicans 
this  right  to  appoint  "watchers"  over  the  sealed 
boxes  I  would  be  giving  the  ballots  into  the 
hands  of  the  enemy;  at  least,  that  was  what 
they  feared. 

I  confess  I  was  curious  to  know  how  far  he 
would  go  in  this  attempt  to  persuade  a  judge  to 
decide  a  case  before  it  came  to  court.  He  did 
not  go  very  far.  Under  my  assurances  that  I 
would  not  shirk  my  responsibility,  that  I  was  not 
prejudiced,  that  I  would  give  him  a  square  deal, 
he  lost  his  temper;  and  pounding  his  fist  into  his 
hand  he  declared  they  would  get  a  change  of 
venue,  and  to  get  it,  they  would  file  affidavits 
that  would  make  my  "ears  ring."  This  threat 
spoiled  the  whole  situation,  as  far  as  I  was  con- 
cerned. I  looked  out  the  window  to  see  how 
near  home  I  was,  and  a  flash  of  lightning  showed 
me  headed  for  the  City  Park  —  which  was  no 
neighbour  of  mine.  "Here,"  I  said,  "where 
are  we  going  ?    Take  me  home." 

It  seemed  that  they  had  mistaken  my  address. 
Smith  calmed  down.  The  cab  lurched  around 
in  the  darkness;  and  the  rest  of  the  conversation 
was  in  a  descending  scale  of  irritation.  We 
drew  up,  at  last,  at  my  door,  and  there  we  stayed 
talking  uselessly,  until,  finally,  I  said:      "Well, 


i  • 


II 


I 


li 


176  THE  BEAST 

it's  for  you  to  determine  the  propriety  of  this  busi- 
ness. All  I  have  to  say  is  that  I  intend  to  hear 
the  case.  Produce  your  affidavits,  and  if  they 
convince  me  I'll  give  you  a  change  of  venue. 
But  I  don't  intend  to  shirk  my  responsibility. 
I  was  non-partisan  in  my  election,  and  I'll  be 
non-partisan  on  the  bench." 

I  got  out.  The  door  was  slammed  angrily 
behmd  me;  and  the  carriage  drove  off.  The 
rain  had  ceased.  I  went  slowly  into  the  house 
with  my  honorary  "Bill-Evans"  degree. 

I  have  often  wondered  whether  any  of  the 
younger  participants  in  those  Commencement  exer- 
cises found  as  little  gilt  on  their  gingerbread  as  I 
did  when  I  got  home  with  mine  out  of  that  storm. 
Or  is  it  only  I  who  so  often  find  the  honorary 
bouquets  of  the  world  a  bunch  of  thistles  when 
I  close  my  flattered  hands  on  them?    I  hope  so. 

Well 

The  case  came  before  me  next  morning,  but 
neither  side  was  ready  to  argue.  Both  asked  a 
continuance,  and  I  granted  it.  I  was  leaving 
town,  that  night,  on  a  long  trip  to  Portland, 
Maine,  where  I  was  to  speak  to  a  charities  con- 
vention about  our  Juvenile  Court  work;  and  I 
arranged  that  Judge  Frost  should  hear  the  pre- 
liminary motions  in  the  election  case  during  my 
absence,  but  keep  the  case  itself  till  I  returned. 
I  had  begun  to  suspect  that  the  System  had 
trapped  itself  in  those  sealed  ballot  boxes,  and  I 


THE  BEAST  AND  THE  BALLOT     177 

wished  to  be  at  hand  with  a  judicial  club  when 
they  were  opened. 

That  evening,  when  I  was  packing  my  valise 
before  I  left  my  home  to  catch  my  train,  I  had  a 
caller  —  a  visitor  from  the  past  —  my  old  part- 
ner in  law.  Senator  Gardener.  He  was  fatter; 
he  looked  more  cynical  and  prosperous,  but  he 
was  the  man  with  whom  I  had  first  been  under 
fire  in  politics,  and  I  was  glad  to  see  him.  We 
talked  of  old  times,  as  old  friends  do.  We  talked 
of  our  present,  and  I  did  not  resent  his  compla- 
cent boast  of  a  financial  success  that  must  have 
contrasted  in  his  mind  with  my  own  circumstances. 
(I  knew  him  too  well  to  resent  it;  I  knew  that  to 
him  I  was  still  the  same  impractical  simpleton  I 
had  always  been.) 

We  finally  came  down  to  the  last  elections 
and  the  case  that  was  before  my  court.  He  said 
that  he  had  been  talking  to  Mr.  Evans  and  to 
"Bob"  Speer;  in  fact,  Mr.  Speer  had  been  to  his 
ofl5ce  to  see  him.  He  had  been  told  that  Chas. 
J.  Hughes,  Jr.,  was  to  appear  before  me  in  my 
court  and  argue  that  T  had  no  jurisdiction.  "I'm 
to  appear  too,"  he  said.  "You  see,  I'm  a 
Republican  and  Hughes  is  a  Democrat,  so  the 
thing  will  be  non-partisan.  Hughes  has  an 
argument  that'll  convince  any  one.  It'll  let  you 
out.  You  needn't  hear  the  case  at  all.  And 
you  know  your  election  as  County  Judge  is  no 
good;  and  if  you  had  to  decide  this  case  agamst 


!     M 


1^ 


178 


THE  BEAST 


H 


'i  ' 


the  Democrats,  you  could  never  get  another  nom- 
ination." 

This  sounded  plausible  —  all  but.  There  was 
one  point  I  wished  explained:  why  did  Mr.  Evans 
feel  that  Chas.  J.  Hughes,  the  corporation  light 
of  the  Colorado  bar,  needed  the  support  of  such 
a  lesser  luminary  as  Gardener  in  the  argument? 

I  said:  "The  statute  of  the  state  says  that  my 
court  shall  have  jurisdiction  in  such  cases,  and 
the  city  charter  expressly  declares  so.  But  if 
they  have  any  law  that  will  convince  me  to 
the  contrary,  you  know  well  enough  I'll  do  my 
duty." 

He  did  not  seem  satisfied.  "To  be  frank 
with  you,"  he  explained,  "they  have  never  quite 
understood  you,  Ben.  They're  afraid  you're  not 
just  right  —  that  they'll  not  get  a  square  deal. 
All  they  want  is  a  square  deal."  (They  have 
their  own  idea  of  "a  square  deal.") 

"You  can  tell  them,"  I  assured  him,  "that 
they  will  receive  absolute  justice.  I  can't  say 
more  than  that,  can  I?" 

He  fidgeted  in  his  chair  like  a  bad  boy  who  is 
about  to  "  snitch."  I  waited.  "  Well,"  h.  hinted, 
"they  want  to  employ  me  in  the  case." 

I  saw  it  coming.  "I'll  be  mighty  glad,  for 
your  sake,"  I  assured  him,  "to  see  you  in  it." 

He  looked  up  with  a  half-sickly  smile.  "Ben," 
he  said,  "you  know  i  don't  want  to  do  anything 
wrong."     (Surely  not!)    "But  you  and  I  have 


THE  BEAST  AND  THE  BALLOT     179 

always  been  friends,  and  you  know  what  poli- 
tics are.  One  side's  just  as  bad  as  the  other, 
and  you  know  it."  He  hesitated.  "Besides,  if 
you  do  go  ahead  and  try  to  hear  the  case,  the 
Supreme  Court  will  enjoin  you." 

"That's  for  the  Supreme  Court  to  decide,"  I 
said  —  and  waited  for  him  to  come  back  to  the 
secret  that  had  stuck  in  his  throat. 

He  talked  around  it  for  a  long  time.  If  I  did 
open  the  ballot  boxes,  he  said,  I  could  put  half 
the  Democrats  in  town  in  jail,  but  it  would  not 
be  enough  to  change  the  results  of  the  election. 
It  would  do  no  good.  He  believed  in  taking  a 
practical  view  of  the  case.  I  could  resolve  the 
reasonable  doubts,  in  the  matter,  in  favour  of  my 
own  party  If  I  did  not,  I  could  never  get  another 
nomination. 

"Well,"  I  said,  "you've  been  out  on  the  Repub- 
lican platform  attacking  the  Democratic  frauds. 
And  now  here  you  are  defending  them!" 

He  turned  red.  "It's  all  damn  politics.  They 
said  they  would  pay  me  a  big  fee."  He  looked 
at  me  with  a  dubious  expression  of  guilt  and 
pleading  shamefacedness.  "It'll  be  the  biggest 
fee  I  ever  got  in  my  life.  And  you  know  I'll  be 
square  with  you."  This  last  was  given  with  an 
insinuating  slowness. 

I  remained  dense.  "I  have  no  objection  to 
seeing  you  in  the  case.  I  don't  see  what  that  has 
to  do  with  it." 


180 


THE  BEAST 


"Well,"  he  said,  "unless  I  can  guarantee  that 
you'll  dismiss  the  case,  they'll  not  employ  me." 

I  do  not  know  whether  they  had  expected  me 
to  ask  how  much  of  the  fee  I  was  to  receive;  or 
whether  it  was  supposed  that  because  of  my  old 
friendship  with  Gardener  I  would  help  him  earn 
the  money! 

I  looked  into  his  fu^e,  as  I  try  to  look  into  the 
faces  of  the  "bad"  boys  who  come  to  my  court. 
"Don't  you  see,"  I  said,  "that  these  fellows  are 
either  trying  to  trap  me,  or  trying  to  make  me  dis- 
grace my  calling  —  and  '  they're  just  using  you  ? 
Why  do  you  let  them  do  it?  You  know  they 
sent  you  here  with  this  message."  He  rose  from 
his  chair,  looking  ugly  and  mean.  "/  know  it," 
I  said.  "Why  do  you  play  cat's-paw  in  such  a 
game?" 

He  looked  about  him  for  his  hat,  scowling.  I 
saw  that  it  was  useless  to  talk  to  him.  "Well," 
I  said,  "you  can  go  back  to  them,  then,  and  tell 
them  this  case  will  be  tried  fairly  and  justly.  I 
have  df^ne  nothmg  to  make  them  think  I'm  'not 
right.'  Their  own  conduct  is  the  cause  of  that 
suspicion." 

He  stopped  at  the  door.  He  asked,  guiltily: 
"Can't  you  get  me  out  of  here  without  any  one 
seeing  me?" 

There  was  onl^  one  way  out,  and  that  was 
through  the  front  door.  He  took  it  —  and  he  left 
behind  him  the  last  faint  sense  of  our  old  friend- 


THE  BEAST  AND  THE  BALLOT     181 

ship.  It  was  he  who  soon  after  introduced  in 
the  Senate  a  bill  forbidding  the  Judge  of  the  County 
Court  to  leave  Denver,  except  in  the  month  of 
July,  under  a  penalty  of  forfeiting  fifteen  dollars 
a  day  during  his  absence;  and  it  was  he  who 
introduced  another  bill,  at  the  same  time,  for- 
bidding Ihe  County  Judge  to  call  in  an  outside 
judge  to  assist  him  with  the  legitimate  work  of  a 
crowded  docket.  At  that  time  our  court  was 
doing  60  per  cent,  more  work  than  the  four 
judges  of  the  district  court,  combined;  and  I 
was  doing  it  practically  alone.  We  had  held  104 
night  sessions  in  one  year.  We  were  turning 
into  the  oounty  nearly  ten  thousand  dollars  a 
year  from  litigants  after  ail  our  salaries  and 
expenses  had  been  paid.  (And  this  was  one  of 
the  complaints  the  politicians  had  against  us. 
We  should  have  used  the  surplus  to  provide  "jobs 
for  the  boys,"  as  the  other  courts  did.)  Instead 
of  taking  the  holidays  allowed  judges  by  custom, 
I  had  spent  my  spare  time  lecturing,  in  various 
states,  in  support  of  juvenile- court  laws  and  the 
work  of  the  Juvenile  Improvement  Association, 
which,  as  a  children's  protective  and  betterment 
league,  was  becoming  a  national  organization. 
President  Roosevelt  had  only  just  recommended 
our  laws  to  the  District  of  Columbia,  and  I  had 
personally  induced  many  governors  in  many 
states  to  do  the  same  thing.  However,  this  attempt 
of  the  "  interests  "  to  hamper  me  in  a  work  that  was 


182 


THE  BEAST 


i  I 

I 

- 


being  approved  all  over  the  country,  is  out  of  its 
order  of  consideration  here.  The  fight  against 
Senator  Gardener's  "spite  bills"  did  not  begin 
till  some  time  later,  and  I  shall  save  the  story  of  it 
for  its  proper  place. 

Meanwhile,  I  went  on  my  trip  to  Maine.    The 
Supreme  Court  granted  the  predicted  writ  of  pro- 
hibition temporarily  enjoining  the  Coanty  Court 
from  trying  the  cases,  and  before  this  writ  was 
made  permanent  something  else  happened.     Our 
old    friend    Boss    Graham,    of    the    Republican 
machine,   went  to   Mr.   John   W.   Springer,   the 
Republican    candidate    for   the   mayoralty   (who 
was  protesting  the  election  of  Speer,  the  corpora- 
tion Democrat),  and  told  Springer  that  if  his  pro- 
test was  not  dropped  and  his  case  in  my  court 
withdrawn   he  would   be  ruined.      He  and    lis 
trust  company  would  have  "the  four  utility  cor- 
porations of  the  city  to  whip  financially."    Gra- 
ham claimed  that  the  threat  came  from  Evans. 
Mr.  Springer  said   publicly:    "I   conferred  with 
the  others  interested   in   pushing  the  cases   and 
said:    'Boys,  we  had  better  quit  before  we  begin. 
We  haven't  enough  money  to  beat  four  utility 
corporations.' "    The  tools  of  the  Beast  had  first 
threatened  him  with  the  ruin  of  his  reputation ; 
they  had  showed    him    "fake"    photo^aphs    of 
himself   in    company    with    various    indenencies; 
and   he  had  replied  that  he  "would  clean  them' 
out   with   a   gun"    if  they  attempted  any  such 


THE  BEAST  AND  THE  BALLOT     183 

vilification.  Some  offensive  articles  about  him 
were  printed  b  i  corporation  paper  of  special 
circulation*;  and  an  attempt  was  made  to  get 
copies  of  a  scurrilous  pamphlet  delivered  to  Mrs. 
Springer  who  lay  fatally  ill  at  the  time.  (Oh, 
the  Beast  has  no  compunction!)  Mr.  Springer 
was  not  ir  imidated.  "But,"  he  said,  "I  could 
not  fight  them  on  the  other  issue.  I  could  not 
jeopardize  the  savings  of  the  widows  and  orphans 
that  were  invested  in  our  trust  company.  They 
had  me  there.    And  they  knew  it." 

Of  course  they  knew  it.  Widows  and  orphans 
were  nothing  to  them.  They  live  by  making 
widows  and  defrauding  orphans.  It  is  part  of 
the  profits  of  the  System.  (It  is  cheaper  to  make 
a  wife  a  widow  than  to  pay  her  husband  a  livmg 
wage,  or  protect  him  at  his  dangerous  work!) 
Mr.  Sprbger  had  some  human  feeling  of  social 
responsibility.  The  others  have  nothing  but  the 
animal  cruelty  of  the  preying  Beast  in  their  hearts 
when   they   are   on    the   hunt.     (Mr.    Walter   S. 

•Perry  CUy's  Review.  Perry  A.  Clay,  ita  proprietor,  is  a  man  whom 
I  law  among  the  armed  gamblers  on  th-i  si  ps  of  the  City  Hall,  defending 
the  corrupt  Fire  and  Police  Board  from  Governor  Waite's  militia.  He 
turned  up  again  among  the  Negro  deputies  who  precipitated  the  election 
rioU  in  1900,  and  he  was  undersherifl  to  the  Democratic  Sheriff  who  sold 
the  use  of  his  office  for  $«0,000  to  the  Republicans  during  that  campaign. 
Clay  has  since  been  politically  rewarded  with  the  clerkship  of  the  Dis- 
trict Court.  His  Beview,  long  supported  by  the  advertisemenU  of 
saloons,  dives  and  brothels,  is  now  disguised  as  a  temperance  advocate: 
and  in  this  disguise,  delivered  free,  from  door  to  door,  whenever  the  Beast 
needs  aid,  it  carries  the  arguments  of  the  corporations  to  the  homes  of  "the 
church  element.**  3^  g^  L 


184 


THE  BEAST 


Cheesman,  president  of  the  water  company, 
afterward  told  a  well-known  banker:  "It  cost 
us  more  to  defeat  Springer  than  any  other  man 
who  ever  ran  for  office  in  Denver!") 

Mr.  Springer  withdrew  his  protest  on  condition 
that  the  Evans  candidates  should  pay  the  court 
costs  thus  far  incurred.  This  was  agreed  to. 
Mr.  Evans  saw  ihat  the  money  was  deposited  to 
the  credit  of  the  Republican  chairman;  and 
$1,000  of  the  sum  came  from  Chase  —  Ed.  Chase! 
Do  \ou  understand  ?  He  was,  and  is,  one  of  the 
"leaders"  of  the  gambling  syndicate  in  Denver. 
There  you  have  the  Beast  scratching  its  right 
ear  with  its  left  hind  leg  —  so  to  speak.  Evans 
and  Chase! 

And  do  not  for  a  moment  imagine  that  this 
unholy  alliance  of  Evans  and  Chase  is  peculiar 
to  Denver.  You  will  find  it  in  every  American 
city  in  which  the  heads  of  public  utility  cor- 
porations and  the  other  "captains  of  industry" 
are  trying  to  obtain  special  privileges  to  steal 
from  the  people.  The  Evans  of  your  city  — 
whichever  one  it  is  —  is  a  partner  with  your 
Chase,  your  Cronin,  your  Tammany  "Savages," 
your  Frank  Adams,  your  Billy  Adams  and  all 
your  enemies  of  law,  promoters  of  graft  and  buz- 
zards of  public  loot.  Chancellor  Buchtel  is  only 
the  Chancellor  Day  of  Denver.  The  Beast  is 
everywhere  the  Beast,  and  its  agents  are  always 
its  agents. 


vJHAPTER  XI 


THE   BEAST  AT  BAT 


THE  elections  that  followed,  in  the  autumn 
of  1904,  were  marked  by  the  most  lawless 
and  far-reaching  contrivances  of  power  on  the 
part  of  the  corporations  in  Colorado.  In  that  huge 
turmoil  of  injustice,  of  subsidized  treason  and  legal 
anarchy,  my  own  small  struggle  was  the  merest 
flurry.  But  I  am  not  trying  to  compo  >?  a  history 
of  the  gigantic  activities  of  the  plutocracy,  out  of 
the  conflicting  testimony  of  various  witnesses  and 
the  disputable  interpretation  of  incidents  of  which 
there  may  be  more  than  one  sense.  I  am  only 
seeking  to  make  plain  to  you  what  I  saw  with  my 
own  eyes  —  to  put  before  you  the  evidence  of  a 
personal  experience  of  which  there  can  be  no 
doubt  —  to  show  you  clearly,  in  the  little,  what 
was  actually  going  on  in  the  large. 

My  election  had  been  declared  invalid,  as  I 
had  known  it  would  be;  and  it  became  necessary 
for  me  to  run  again.  The  corporations,  having 
put  their  Democratic  tools  in  power  in  the  city 
elections  of  the  spring,  now  bought  back  the 
Republican  machine  so  as  to  elect  a  corporation 
Legislature  and  governor  in  the  state  elections  of 


186 


THE  BEAST 


the  fall.  I  expected,  therefore,  to  have  the  Repub- 
licans against  me,  and  we  l>egan  to  organize  the 
us';bI  committees  and  arrange  for  the  usual  public 
meetings  in  advance.  But  several  days  before 
the  Republican  convention  was  to  meet,  a  number 
of  Republican  "leaders,"  in  newspaper  inter- 
views, announced  that  there  would  be  no  oppo- 
sition to  my  nomination  on  the  Republican  ticket; 
and  Mr.  "Jim"  Williams,  one  of  the  most  inti- 
mate of  VVm.  G.  Evans's  personal  agents,  invited 
me  to  meet  him  in  a  room  in  the  Brown  Palace 
Hotel  and  assured  me  that  it  would  not  be  neces- 
sary to  "organize"  my  friends.  "There  seems 
to  be  no  use  trying  to  fight  you,"  he  said  with  a 
smile,  "and  we  have  decided  to  nominate  ^  ju 
when  the  convention  meets  next  week." 

I  felt  relieved.  The  spring  campaign  ''  d  been 
a  nervous  trial  that  I  did  not  wish  to  ^at.  I 
thanked  Williams  for  saving  me  the  a  xiety  of 
several  days'  uncertainty,  and  wtJt  baci.  to  my 
court  work. 

Some  days  later  I  spoke  to  a  Republican  friend 
about  the  interview  w'ui  Williams,  and  he  said: 
"That's  strange.  Jim  iias  been  quietly  sending 
the  word  'down  the  line'  that  the  party  caucus  is 
to  put  young  Bert  Shattuok  (Hubert  L.  Shattuck)* 
on  the  slate,  to-night,  for  County  Judge."  I 
thought  my  friend  was  misinformed.  The  Den- 
ver Republican,  the  official  organ  of  the  party, 

'Shattuck  if  now  (Jan.,  ISIO)  a  Diitrict  Judge  in  Damr. 


THE  BEAST  AT  BAY  187 

had  been  proclaiming  in  large  headlincii  and 
leaded  ty|>c  that  I  «vus  to  l>e  nominated  unani- 
mously on  the  party  ticket.  Bert  Shattut-k's 
father,  the  former  Dean  of  the  Denver  University, 
had  publicly  declared  that  I  ought  to  have  the 
position  of  County  and  Juvenile  Court  judge  for 
life;  and  he  had  come  smilingly  to  my  -hambcrs 
and  promised  me  his  loyal  support.  IIi.->  .son  had 
been  Clerk  of  the  County  Court  when  1  first  took 
office,  and  we  had  never  been  anything  but 
friendly.  It  seemed  to  me  im[H)s.sible  that  my 
Republican  informant  could  be  right. 

The  night  on  which  the  Republican  caucus 
met,  to  make  up  a  slate  for  the  convention,  I  made 
no  attempt  to  find  out  what  was  being  done;  but 
at  midnight  I  was  roused  from  bed  to  answer 
an  urgent  call  on  the  telephone,  and  a  friend  an- 
nounced: "The  Republicans  have  selected  Shot- 
tuck  for  County  Judge.  Evan'  sent  a  telegram 
from  New  York  saying  it  b.id  to  be  'lone.  The  cor- 
porations are  against  you.  They're  going  to  prevent 
you  from  getting  a  nomination  on  either  ticket." 

I  dressed  in  haste  and  hurried  down  to  the 
office  of  the  News  —  which  paper,  like  the  Den- 
ver Post,  was  then  friendly  to  me  —  and  a  special 
edition  was  rushed  to  the  presses  with  a  flaming 
exposure  of  "Treachery"  on  the  front  page.  In 
the  early  morning  I  went  to  the  editor  of  the  Post 
and  a  special  edition  was  issued  by  that  paper 
too.     But  the  Republican  —  the  paper  that  had 


Jl 


HI 
'  it 


188 


THE  BEAST 


'i 
1  I 


111 


been  promising  my  unopposed  nomination  by 
the  Republican  party  —  inserted  only  an  mcon- 
spicuous  five-line  paragraph  announcing  that 
Shattuck  had  been  selected  by  the  caucus! 

We   had   been   prettily   betrayed.     There   was 
no  time  now  to  arouse  the  public  sentiment  that, 
at  the  previous  election,  had  "scared  the  wits  out 
of  the  Boss,"  as  the  Post  had  said.     There  was 
no  time   to   organize  the   women   and   children. 
We  had  just  twelve  hours  in  which  to  prepare, 
before  the  Republican  convention  should  meet  to 
ratify  the  choice  of  the  caucus;    and  it  might  as 
well    have    been    twelve    minutes.     The    Demo- 
cratic machine  was  against  me.     Mayor  Speer, 
it  was  reported  in  the  newspapers,  "on  the  very 
best  authority,"  had  obtained  the  promise  from 
Evans  that  I  should  not  be  nominated.     "Chair- 
man Davoren,  for  the  Democrats,  smiled  pleasantly 
when   these   matters   were   being   discussed."    I 
had    been    "effectually    blocked."     Opposed    by 
both  parties,  with  both  machines  using  election 
frauds  and  corporation  contributions  against  me, 
I  could  have  no  more  hope  of  winning  my  way 
back    to    the    county   court    on   an    independent 
ticket  than  of  getting  an  election  to  the  White 
House  itself. 

Some  of  the  young  Republican  reformers  who 
had  nominated  me  in  the  spring  campaign  came 
to  my  chambers,  that  morning,  and  talked  the 
situation  over  with  me.     They  suggested  that  I 


THE  BEAST  AT  BAY  189 

should  appeal  to  Mr.  David  H.  MoflFat,  who  was 
president  of  the  First  National  Bank  of  Denver 
and  a  large  stockholder  in  the  utility  corpora- 
tions. But  I  did  not  know  Mr.  Moffat.  The  only 
man  of  the  sort  whom  I  knew  was  Mr.  Walter  S. 
Cheesman,  president  of  the  Denver  Union  Water 
Company  and  head  of  our  Society  for  the  Pre- 
vention of  Cruelty  to  Children.  "Then  see 
Cheesman,"  they  advised. 

I  knew  Mr.  Cheesman  well.  I  had  first  gone 
to  him  to  get  his  aid  in  obtaining  the  public  baths 
and  playgrounds  for  the  children,  and  he  had  been 
helping  us  in  our  work  for  the  children  ever  since. 
I  had  more  than  once  accompanied  him,  in  his 
automobile,  on  little  jaunts  around  Denver;  and 
once,  on  our  way  to  inspect  the  waterworks  dam, 
which  his  company  was  building  outside  Denver, 
I  saw  him  stop  his  car,  pick  up  a  stray  cat  mew- 
ing by  the  roadside,  and  take  it  to  the  dam  where 
we  caught  fish  to  feed  it.  I  thought  him  a  gentle 
and  compassionate  man  of  wealth  —  and  I  hur- 
ried, now,  to  his  oflSce  to  appeal  to  his  philan- 
thropy, to  his  interest  in  our  court  work,  and 
above  all  to  his  influence  with  Mr.  Evans  and  his 
power  on  the  corporation  boards. 

I  went  to  the  oflSces  of  the  Denver  Union  Water 
Company,  and  was  ushered  down  the  inner  pas- 
sageways, past  clerks  and  secretaries,  to  Mr. 
Cheesman's  private  room.  He  was  seated  at 
his  mahogany  writing  desk,   a  typical   business 


190 


THE  BEAST 


man  in  his  business  clothes  —  bald,  elderly,  with 
a  round  and  kindly  face  but  shrewd,  cold  eyes. 
He  received  me  genially  enough.  "Mr.  Chees- 
man,"  I  said,  at  once,  "I've  come  to  see  you  about 
the  convention." 

"Yes,  yes,  Judge,"  he  said;  "sit  down."  I 
sat  down.  He  always  spoke  in  a  sort  of  half 
voice,  that  at  times  became  a  whisper,  leaning 
forward,  as  if  confidentially,  because  his  hear- 
ing was  defective.  "Yes,  I've  just  been  talking 
to  Mr.  Field  about  it  over  the  telephone."  Mr. 
Field,  of  course,  was  Mr.  E.  B.  Field,  president 
of  the  telephone  company. 

Thus  encouraged,  I  went  on  to  explain  my  situ- 
ation. I  told  him  that  I  had  made  a  lot  of  ene- 
mies among  the  Democrats  because  I  had  exposed 
the  grafting  County  Commissioners  and  attacked 
the  Police  Board  for  protecting  the  wine  rooms 
and  denounced  the  ballot-box  stuflBng  that  had 
been  done  by  the  Democratic  machine.  I  could 
not  hope  for  the  Democratic  nomination,  but  I 
had  been  led  to  expect  a  place  on  the  Republican 
ticket.  Now  I  had  been  betrayed  by  the  Repub- 
lican caucus.  "It's  not  square,"  I  said.  "It's 
not  honest.     It's  not  fair." 

He  listened,  but  I  saw  that  he  listened  unmoved. 

Then  I  appealed  to  his  interest  in  the  work  we 
had  done  for  the  children.  He  heard  me  poiitely, 
but  with  a  blank  eye.  "You  know,"  I  pleaded, 
"that  I'm  entitled  to  a  renomination  on  every 


THE  BEAST  AT  BAY 


191 


count.  The  court  has  been  honest;  it's  been 
efficient;  it  has  served  the  public  interest  every 
time.  The  people  will  elect  me;  you  know  that. 
Nobody's  against  me  but  Mr.  Evans,  and  it's 
Mr.  Evans  that's  standing  in  my  way.  He  sent 
a  telegram  from  New  York  saying  I  wasn't  to  be 
nominated.  That's  the  whole  trouble.  If  we 
can  get  Mr.  Evans  to  keep  his  hands  off,  I'll  have 
no  difficulty.  Won't  you  help  us?  We  can  do 
it  if  you'll  help  pull  off  Mr.  Evans." 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "I  understand  that  Mr.  Evans 
is  against  you.  And  I've  been  thinking  the  mat- 
ter over.  I'd  like  to  see  you  returned  to  the  court. 
You've  been  doing  good  work  there  .  .  .  Yes 
.  .  .  Personally  Mr.  Field  and  I  admit  all 
you  say.  You  are  entitled  to  be  renominated. 
But  Mr.  Evans  represents  our  interests  in  poli- 
tics, and,  of  course,  you  understand,  politics  with 
us  is  a  matter  of  business.  Mr.  Evans  represents 
our  interests  and  we  cannot  ■.  ry  well  question 
his  judgment.  If  Mr.  Evans  were  here,  I'd  make 
an  exception  in  your  favour  and  see  him  about  it. 
But  he's  in  >     '  York " 

"Send  him  a  telegram,"  I  put  in  eagerly,  "I 
can  get  it  rushed  through.  I  know  them  —  down 
at  the  telegraph  offices.  We  can  get  an  answer 
back  before  the  convention  meets." 

He  shook  his  head  over  it,  judicially.  "I'm 
afraid  it's  too  late.  Mr.  Evans  insists  that  Mr. 
Shattuck  must  be  nominated  by  the  Republicans. 


[  5  :'■ 


192 


THE  BEAST 


n. 


He  has  arranged  with  Mr.  Speer  that  Judge  John- 
son (Henry  V.  Johnson)  is  to  be  nominated  on 
the  Democratic  ticket.  I'm  afraid  I  can't  go 
behind  him." 

"Well!    What    about    the    people?"    I    cried. 

He  replied,  benignly:  "You  have  been  long 
enough  in  politics  to  know  the  people  have  nothing 
to  do  v'ith  these  things." 

He  spoke  as  if  I  were  a  personal  friend  come  to 
borrow  money  from  his  company,  without  secur- 
ity, and  he  regretted  that  he  could  not  leu''  it  — 
as  a  matter  of  business  — though  personally  he 
would  have  liked  to.  I  felt  the  ground  slipping 
from  under  my  feet.  I  made  a  frantic  appeal  to 
him  —  for  the  sake  of  the  work  for  the  children 
which  would  be  discredited  all  over  the  country 
if  I  were  refused  a  nomination  by  both  parties. 
Every  one  would  think  the  Juvenile  Court  had 
been  a  failure.  In  other  cities,  where  I  had  been 
lecturing,  they  would  think  so.  They  would  not 
understand  why  I  had  been  defeated.  The  move- 
ment was  growing.  A  check  to  it  might  be  fatal 
now.  The  other  cities  were  looking  to  Denver. 
It  would  hurt  tho  work  for  the  children  all  over 
the  states. 

"Tut,  tut,"  he  said.  He  thought  I  was  "over- 
exercised" —  "unduly"  alarmed.  Mr.  Shattuck 
was  an  intelligent  young  man.  He  could  con- 
tinue the  work.     Or  Judge  Johnson. 

By  this  time  I  had  lost  my  self-control.    I  knew 


THE  BEAST  AT  BAY 


193 


that  neither  Shattuck  nor  Johnson  could  do  the 
work  of  our  court;  they  had  no  training  for  it,  no 
knowledge  of  its  methods,  no  understanding  of 
its  aims.  Besides,  it  was  the  work  of  my  life;  it 
was  the  one  thing  left  to  me;  I  had  fought  and 
suffered  for  it,  struggled  and  succeeded  with  it, 
when  no  one  believed  in  it.     And  now 

I  jumped  up  from  my  chair  and  began  pacing 
about  the  room,  arguing,  pleading  with  him, 
almost  beseeching  him  not  to  join  Mr.  Evans  in 
crushing  our  court  because  we  had  done  what  was 
honest,  what  was  right.  "It's  an  outrage!"  I 
cried,  backing  up  against  the  wall  before  him. 
"It's  an  outrage  that  Mr.  Evans  should  be  the 
man  to  say  whether  I'm  to  work  for  the  children 
in  this  community  —  or  not!" 

He  seemed  embarrassed,  as  if  he  were  a  public 
executioner  who  pitied  his  victim  but  could  not 
help  him.  "Sit  down  a  minute,"  he  would  say; 
and  I  would  sit  down,  only  to  spring  up  again 
when  his  unyielding  "business"  considerations 
forced  me  to  face  again  the  hopelessness  of  my 
situation.  "I'll  run  any  way,"  I  said  in  des- 
peration. 

"No,"  he  warned  me,  "don't  do  that.  As  a 
friend,  I  wouldn't  advise  you  to  do  that.  If  I 
thought  you  had  a  chance,  I'd  like  to  see  you  run. 
But  you  know  it's  impossible  under  our  ballot 
laws.  The  people  don't  know  how  to  'scratch.' 
It's  impossible."    He  was  afraid  that  I  was  such 


( 

t 

I 


194 


THE  BEAST 


'I     'K 


a  "headstrong  young  man"  I  miglit  make  an 
expensive  independent  campaign,  and  mortgage 
my  house  (he  even  thought  of  that!)  and  lose  all 
I  had.  And  while  he  spoke,  calmly,  the  anger 
rose  in  my  throat.  I  could  guess  why  Mr.  Evans 
was  to  give  the  Democratic  nomination  to  Judge 
Johnson;  wasn't  it  because  Judge  Johnson,  while 
mayor  of  Denver,  had  signed  a  franchise  for  the 
tramway  company  against  the  protests  of  the 
whole  community  and  in  violation  of  the  plat- 
form on  which  he  had  been  elected?  I  could 
guess  why  Mr.  Evans  had  insisted  that  I  should 
not  be  nominated  by  either  party;  wasn't  it  because 
I  had  refused  to  job  the  election  contests  ?  Weren't 
these  the  "business  considerations"  that  put  Mr. 
Evans  against  me  and  joined  Mr.  Cheesman  with 
him?  Mr.  Cheesman  might  pretend  to  be  as 
friendly  and  as  fatherly  as  he  chose,  in  his  advice; 
my  anger  dried  the  blur  in  my  eyes  and  I  saw 
through  him.  I  saw  through  him  and  I  despised 
him.  Business  demanded  that  I  should  be 
crushed.  The  Beast  required  it.  The  tools  of 
the  Beast  —  like  the  grafting  Commissioners  who 
had  rebated  taxes  for  Mr.  Cheesman's  corpora- 
tions —  insisted  on  it.  The  ballot  laws  made  it 
possible  —  the  very  laws  which  Cheesman  deplored 
and  his  corporations  took  advantage  of! 

I  struck  my  clenched  hand  on  his  table,  furious 
with  indignation.  "I'm  going  to  make  a  fight," 
I  challenged  him.     "  Will  you  stand  by  me  ?" 


THE  BEAST  AT  BAY  195 

"I  can't,"  he  hedged,  "if  you  run  independent. 
You  have  no  chance." 

That  was  the  end.  That  was  the  "show- 
down." I  caught  up  my  hat.  "I'm  going  to 
fight,"  I  said,  "and  figiit  like  hell."  And  with- 
out waiting  to  hear  his  fluttered  remonstrances  I 
flung  out  of  his  office,  trembluig  with  an  agitation 
I  could  not  conceal  from  the  clerks  who  stared  at 
me  as  I  hurried  by. 

It  was  the  Beast  again,  the  whole  Beast  at  last, 
self-acknowledged  and  unashamed.  The  people 
had  "nothing  to  do  with  these  things."  The 
united  corporations  ruled  the  town.  I  had 
offended  tliem  when  I  fought  graft,  ballot-box 
stuffing,  the  wine  rooms,  the  Police  Board,  and 
all  the  other  effects,  means  and  agents  of  their 
rule.  And  here  I  had  wasted  a  valuable  hour 
appealing  to  one  of  the  patrons  of  this  corrup- 
tion to  help  me  fight  it!  I  do  not  know  whether  I 
despised  Cheesman  more  than  I  despised  myself 
for  my  trusting  simplicity  as  I  hurried  back  to  my 
chambers  that  morning  from  my  appeal  to  the 
head  of  the  Children's  Aid  Society  to  save  the 
Children's  Court! 

I  had  only  a  few  hours  left.  The  Republican 
convention  was  to  meet  that  afternoon.  I  tele- 
phoned to  all  my  friends  among  the  young  Repub- 
licans, telling  them  that  Cheesman  would  not  help, 
that  we  must  fight  alone  and  at  least  go  down 
fighting.     They  must  hold  the  floor  in  the  con- 


m 
m 


106 


THE  BEAST 


vention  until  we  could  get  in  the  women  —  the 
children  —  anybody  who  would  shout  for  us  and 
intimidate  the  machine.  I  got  all  the  men  who 
had  fought  for  me  in  the  Republican  convention 
in  the  spring  — E.  P.  Costigan,  James  C.  Stark- 
weather, Wm.  W.  Garwood,  Willis  V.  Elliott, 
Horace  Phelps,  James  H.  Causey,  Rodney  Bard- 
well  (who  had  not  yet  gone  over  to  the  corpora- 
lions)  —  and  they  got  the  aid  of  their  friends. 
When  the  convention  met,  there  was  not  a  quorum 
present,  but  within  half  an  hour  the  old  Coliseum 
Hall  began  to  fill  and  the  fight  commenced  —  on 
a  resolution  offered  by  ex- Judge  George  W.  Allen* 
Jelegating  the  work  of  the  convention  to  a  com- 
mittee so  that  the  machine  might  "knife"  me 
privately  behind  closed  doors. 

Costigan,  Causey,  Starkwejtther,  Garwood,  and 
the  other  young  reformers  held  the  floor  against 
Allen,  fighting  for  time.  Delegates  were  pouring 
in  from  all  parts  of  the  city;  the  galleries  were  fill- 
ing up  with  cheering  men,  women  and  children. 
In  an  hour  the  place  was  jammed,  a  it  was 
jammed  with  opponents  of  the  machine.  The 
"Treachery"  extras  of  the  morning  newspapers 
had  done  their  work,  and  the  public  enthusiasm 
that  had  "scared  the  wits  out  of  the  Boss"  in  the 
spring  now  scared  the  wits  out  of  his  henchmen. 
They  lost  control  of  the  convention.  It  was  less 
like  a    onvention,  as  the  newspapers  said,  than  it 

•Allen  is  now  (Jan.,  1910)  a  District  Judge  in  Deurer. 


THE  BEAST  AT  BAY  107 

was  like  the  gathering  of  a  mob.  The  machine 
speakers  were  howled  down,  hissed  and  jeered. 
The  young  reformers  were  applauded  and  cheered 
on.  The  galleries  hootcl  and  clapped.  In  a 
confusion  of  cat-calls  and  insults,  Ex-judge  Allen 
withdrew  his  motion;  and  my  friends  spoke  for 
my  nomination  in  the  midst  of  an  enthusiasm  that 
carried  all  before  it  —  in  one  of  those  waves  of 
emotion  that  sometimes  sweep  conventions  and 
wreck  the  best- contrived  plans  of  the  most  astute 
politicians.  In  vain  did  tramway  agents  like  C. 
W.  Varnum  try  to  stand  against  it.  In  vain  did 
Mr.  Fred  J.  Chamberlain,*  a  pillar  of  his  (and 
IMr.  Evans's)  church,  cry:  "You  fellows  mustn't 
nominate  Lindsey.  You  can't."  They  did.  To 
the  waving  of  handkerchiefs  in  the  galleries,  with 
"staid  lawyers  tossing  their  hats  in  the  air"  (as 
the  papers  said)  —  with  Bert  Shattuck  withdraw- 
ing his  nomination,  and  pandemonium  let  loose 
upon  the  angry  and  helpless  machine  men  who 
could  not  make  themselves  heard  —  my  nomina- 
tion was  moved  —  was  carried  —  was  made 
unanimous  —  and  the  wild  cheering  of  the  con- 
vention drowned  the  ragtime  of  the  brass  band ! 

We  had  won  again.  At  least  we  had  carried 
the  first  line  of  the  System's  defence.  The  sec- 
ond fell  when  the  Democratic  Executive  Com- 
mittee, alarmed  by  my  apparent  popularity,  also 

»Mr.  Chamberlain  is  now  a  member  of  the  Colorado  Railroad  Com- 
miasioD,  a^d  Vamum  of  the  City  Civil  Service  Board 


198 


THE  BEAST 


I' 
m 


nominated  me.  But  the  System  still  had  the 
courts  to  appeal  to.  It  had  particularly  Judge 
Peter  L.  Palmer,  who  had  protected  Cronin  and 
the  dive  keepers;  and  on  the  application  of  Mil- 
ton Smith  he  granted  a  temporary  injunction 
enjoining  me  from  running  —  on  the  ground  that 
my  previous  election  was  valid.  (It  seems  impos- 
sible —  doesn't  it  ?  —  but  it  is  all  on  record  in  the 
courts  of  the  county.)  One  of  the  attorneys  in 
the  case  confessed  to  me:  ''Ihc  whole  thing's 
fixed  up.  They're  afraid  more  election  protests 
will  come  into  your  court,  and  something  lias  to 
be  done."  When  we  went  before  Palmer  to 
argue  against  making  the  injunction  permanent, 
we  found  him  closeted  with  the  machine  politi- 
cians; and  when  he  mounted  the  bench  he  ren- 
dered his  decision  against  us  without  even  allowing 
my  lawyers  to  open  their  mouths.  (This  was 
not  in  Russia  under  a  Czar.  It  was  in  Colorado 
under  the  System.) 

The  public  outcry  was  effective.  The  Supreme 
Court  reversed  Judge  Palmer.  Another  suit  was 
promptly  trumped  up  and  1'.  'mer  granted  another 
injunction  this  time,  in  effect,  forbidding  the  elec- 
tion commissioners  to  print  my  name  on  the  official 
ballot  as  a  candidate  of  the  conventions  that  had 
nominated  me.  But  he  was  reversed  again  on  a 
ruling  of  the  Supreme  Court  that  such  suits  must 
be  brought  after  the  elections,  not  before  them; 
and  I  was  allowed  to  make  my  campaign,  the 


THE  BEAST  AT  BAY  199 

System  meanwhile  having  discovered  a  less  public 
way  of  getting  rid  of  me. 

I  was  allowed  to  make  my  own  campaign,  and 
I  took  the  opportunity  of  making  another,  directed 
against  Harry  A.  Lindsley,  who  had  been  renom- 
inated »4d  District  Attorney,  and  against  "Len" 
Rogers,  a  notorious  election  crook,  whom  the 
Democrats  had  put  on  the  ticket  as  State  Sen.  ■ 
tor.  I  fought  Rogers  on  general  principles;  his 
candidacy  was  an  outrage  to  decency.  I  fought 
Lindsley  because  I  hoped  to  hamstring  the  Beast 
by  putting  in  an  honest  District  Attorney.  We 
succeeded  in  defeating  both  Lindsley  and  Rogers, 
but  the  man,  George  Stidger,  who  took  Lindsley 's 
office,  proved  little  better  than  the  corruptionist 
whom  we  displaced.  (He  confessed  to  me  after- 
ward that  he,  too,  had  been  nominated  by  Evans, 
and  that  Evans,  personally,  had  given  him  money 
for  his  campaign.) 

In  the  fight  against  Lindsley  and  Rogers  all 
the  old  tricks  of  the  Beast  were  used  against  us. 
False  affidavits  were  obtained,  from  two  unfortu- 
nate women  of  the  streets,  accusing  me  of  unmen- 
tionable vices;  but  I  was  warned  of  it  in  advance, 
by  a  friendly  physician  who  heard  of  it,  and  when 
Rogers  came  to  my  chambers  to  threaten  the 
publication  of  this  perjured  slander,  I  was  able 
to  defy  him.  I  had  found  out  who  the  women 
were,  and  one  of  them  had  admitted  her  guilt. 
Fortunately  for  Rogers  he  went  no  further  with 


t 
I  I 

I 


flOO 


THE  BEAST 


the  affair.  I  continued  to  make  public  my  know- 
ledge of  his  record,  and  of  Lindsley's.  One  day 
Rogers,  crazed  with  wiiiskey,  came  to  the  Court 
House  and  lay  in  wait  for  me  with  a  loaded  revol- 
ver in  the  corridor  outside  my  chambers,  but  a 
friendly  deputy  sheriff  (Edward  G.  Shaffer)  came 
upon  him  there  and  got  the  revolver  from  him 
and  coaxed  him  away. 

"Judge,"  Rogers  confessed  to  me  afterward, 
"Those  fellows  down  at  the  Democratic  Club  put 
me  up  to  it.  They  kept  saying  'Len,  if  the  little 
— — said  things  like  that  about  me,  I'd  shoot 
him!'"  (Exactly  the  same  tactics  that  ended  in 
the  shooting  of  Heney  in  San  Francisco!)  "I 
got  drunk,  and  they  egged  me  on  to  it."  And  that 
poor  tool,  in  tears,  almost  went  down  on  his  knees, 
in  my  chambers,  to  ask  forgiveness  for  the  slan- 
ders he  had  circulated  ahou'  ne,  the  attempts  he 
made  to  ruin  me ! 

Forgiveness?  I  could  forgive  him  a  thousand 
times  over.  I  had  never  had  anything  but  pity 
for  him  in  my  heart.  But  I  could  not  forgive 
the  men  who  had  brought  him  to  that  posture 
before  me  —  who  had  debased  him  in  his  own 
tears  —  a  man  like  myself,  crawling  in  spirit 
through  the  degradation  of  remorse  for  the  crimes 
with  which  they  had  polluted  him.  O  you  rulers 
of  Denver  —  to  whom  "politics  is  a  matter  of 
business"  —  this  was  your  work!  The  bleed- 
ing Clerk  in  the  Capitol,  the  poor  Negro  shot  in 


THE  BEAST  AT  BAY  soi 

the  gutter,  the  would-be  murderer  weeping  over 
hU  shame  —  these  are  among  the  spoils  of  your 
triumph.  Let  your  clerks  and  bookkeepers  write 
tfum  down  in  your  ledgers  beside  the  columns  of 
millions  which  thefr  dishonoured  lives  helped  you 

to  gain.    Cheesman 

Cheesman  is  dead.    I  wish  to  say  nothing  but 
good  of  the  dead;  but  "the  evil  a  man  does  lives 
after  him";  and  of  tliat  evil  I  propose  to  say  noth- 
ing but  ill.     What  else  can  I  say  of  the  part  that 
his  corporation  took  in  the  system  of  evil  which  I 
have  described?    ^Vhat  else  can  I  say  of  the  his- 
tory of  the  Denver  Union  Water  Company,  with 
*«^'*^°'''  °^  '*''*'*  rebated,  assessments  reduced? 
What  else  can  I  say  of  the  preparations  that  are 
now  being  made  —  this  day.  as  I  write  —  to  force 
the  people  of  Denver  either  to  pay  $14,400,000  for 
the  water  works  or  to  grant  the  company  a  new 
franchise?     What  else  can  I  say  of  the  fact  that 
after  Mr.  Cheesman's  death,  it  was  proposed  to 
a  complaisant   City   Council   that  our   Congress 
Park  —  donated  to  the  city  by  the  Federal  Govern- 
ment ana  valued  at  a  million  dollars  —  should 
be  named  in  his  honour  "Cheesman  Park,"  on 
condition  that  his  heirs  spend  $100,000  erecting  a 
public  monument  to  his  memory  there;    and  the 
City  Council  dedicated  that  public  park  to  the 

private  glory  of  this 

No.    Let  us  say  nothing  but  good  of  tV,  dead. 
Let  us  say  that  on  the  highest  point  of     Jorpo- 


202 


THE  BEAST 


ration  Park,"  where  the  view  of  the  Rockies  is 
most  beautiful,  the  rulers  of  Denver  are  building 
a  marble  pavilion,  with  fountains  and  electric 
lights,  to  perpetuate  the  dishonour  of  the  Beast 
and  immortalize  the  success  of  its  knaveries!  Let 
us  not  join  the  name  of  the  dead  to  this  edifice  of 
public  shame.  Let  us  see  in  it  only  a  memorial  to 
the  Beast,  erected  by  the  Beast,  as  a  mark  of 
its  power  over  a  free  community  betrayed  and 
corrupted;  and  seeing  in  it  only  sdch  a  memorial, 
let  us  realize  that  a  monument  in  Washington  to 
Benedict  Arnold  or  to  Wilkes  Booth  would  not  be 
a  sorer  insult  to  the  sun  that  shines  on  it,  the  rain 
that  wets  it.  Let  us  citizens  of  Denver  look  up 
at  that  pavilion,  when  we  pass,  as  the  disfran- 
chised patriot  of  a  subject  race  looked  at  a  Roman 
Arch  of  Triumph  in  his  capital,  with  the  blood  of 
indignation  swelling  against  the  iron  collar  on  his 
neck.  Let  us  leave  the  dead  to  their  rest  —  for- 
given.   Our  war  is  with  the  living. 


CHAPTER  XII 


THE  BEAST  AND  THE  SUPREME  COURT 

IN  a  republic,  such  as  ours,  where  the  law  is 
the  only  king,  "there  is  a  divinity  doth  hedge" 
the  courts;  and  it  is  right  that  it  should  be  so.  If 
our  democracy  is  to  endure,  we  must  obey  the 
law  and  respect  its  agents.  The  man  who  wil- 
fully tries  to  impair  the  public  credit  of  our  courts, 
when  those  courts  are  just,  is  the  greatest  traitor 
that  our  country  has.  But  what  if  a  court  is  not 
just?  What  if  it  does  not  impartially  admin- 
ister the  law,  but  does  the  bidding  of  a  ruling  fac- 
tion of  the  community,  and  oppresses  the  help- 
less many  in  the  interests  of  the  powerful  few? 
Must  we  respect  the  corrupt  priest  and  minister 
of  justice  who  degrades  his  almost  holy  office  and 
defiles  the  very  temple  of  justice  with  his  iniqui- 
ties? Must  we  obey  the  court  that  crushes  us? 
Or  is^  it  true  with  courts  as  it  is  with  monarchs 
that  "resistance  to  tyrants  is  obedience  to  God"? 
Throughout  this  story  I  have  been  careful  to 
accuse  no  judge  of  corruption,  by  inference  — 
to  relate  nothing  of  him  but  what  I  personally 
knew  to  be  true.  I  have  refrained  from  arguing 
any  conclusions;  I  have  left  the  facts  to  plead  for 

«03 


^fl 


204  THE  BEAST 

themselves.    I    have    particularly    respected    the 
Supreme  Court  of  Colorado,  the  high  altnr  of  jus- 
tice in  our  state;    and  even  when  the  evidences 
of  corruption  there  were  more  than  arguable,  I 
have  drawn  no  inferences  of  guilt.     I  have  waited 
until  I  had  followed  the  trail  of  the  Beast,  step 
by  step,  from  the  dives  to  the  Police  Board,  from 
the  Police  Board  to  the  lower  courts,  from  the 
courts  to  the  political  leaders  who  nominated  the 
judges  of  the  courts,  and  from  the  political  lead- 
ers to  the  corporation  magnates  who  ruled  all. 
But  now  the  trail  goes  one  step  farther.    It  leads 
from  the  offices  of  the  corporations  to  the  doors 
of  the  Capitol;   it  ascends  the  steps  of  the  State 
House;    it  enters  the  sacred  precincts  of  the  Su- 
preme Court  itself.     And  I  propose  to  follow  it. 
I  thought  I  had  seen  the  footprint  of  the  Beast 
in  the  Supreme  Court's  decisions  on  our  three- 
fourths-jury  law.     I  thought  I  had  seen  it  in  the 
decision  that  protected  the  ballot-box  stuffer  who 
was  prosecuted  by  the  Honest  Election  League. 
I  thought  I  had  seen  it  in  the  injunction  that  pre- 
vented me  from  opening  the  ballot  boxes  in  the 
spring  of  1904.    I  thought  I  had  seen  it  in  1893 
when  the  tramway  company  claimed  a  perpetual 
franchise  in  Denver,  contrary  to  the  provision  of 
the  constitution  that  declared:  "No  law  making 
an  irrevocable  grant  of  privileges,  franchises  or 
immunities,  shall  be  passed  by  the  General  Assem- 
bly's—and   Justice    Luther    M.    Goddard    first 


THE  SUPREME  COURT  205 

held  that  the  franchise  was  void,  and  then,  allowed 
a  rehearing  and  reversed  himself!  (So  that  the 
tramway  company  was  able  to  sell  its  stocks  and 
bonds  in  Wall  Street  on  the  representation  that 
It  had  a  franchise  without  limit  as  to  time,  and 
herefore.  perpetual,"  in  spite  of  the  constitution, 
the  law  and  the  courts.)  But  these  were  merely 
strongly  suspicious  circumstances;  I  needed  proofs 
hat  were  above  suspicion.  I  got  them  in  the 
memorable  elections  of  the  fall  of  1904. 

Six  months  before,  in  the  spring,  the  corpora- 
tions had  elected  Mayor  Speer  and  his  Demo- 
cratic machine  men  by  ballot-box  frauds  that 
were  open  and  admitted.  But  the  state  was  nor- 
mally Republican ;  and  the  corporations  now 
u  ■'id  Republican  .1.  order  to  elect  their  candi- 
-  to   the  Legislature   and  the  governorship, 

lae  Democrats  were  warned  that  they  must  not 
stuff     the   ballot  boxes;  and   Speer  in  person 
earned  the  warning  to  the  Democratic  "Savages  " 
ward  heelers  and  election  crooks  —  as  they  them- 
selves   afterward    confessed    to    me.     The    Sav 
ages     having    candidates,    on    the    Democratic 
ticket,  from  their  own  ranks,  took  the   warning 
with  a  countenance  that  did  not  promise  well 
and  before  the  balloting  began  -  on   the  appli- 
cation of  a  corporation  attorney  acting  ostensibly 
for  the  Republican  party -the  Supreme  Court 
issued  a  blanket  injunction  enjoining  the  election 
officials  from  committing  ballot-box  frauds,  and 


llj 


me 


THE  BEAST 


\i  ;  ' 


Vi 


appointed  "watchers"  who  were  responsible  to 
the  court  alone. 

The  injunction  was  printed  in  the  form  of  a 
poster  and  pasted  up  all  over  the  city.  I  saw  it,  and 
read  it,  with  amazement.  Not  only  was  it  without 
precedent  in  the  whole  history  of  American  juris- 
prudence, but  it  was  without  legislative  or  con- 
stitutional authority,  and  it  was  in  contravention 
of  all  the  specific  provisions  made  by  law  for  the 
conduct  of  elections.  It  was  an  exercise  of  "  kingly 
prerogative"  that  was  declared  by  lawyers  and 
law  journals  to  be  the  most  amazing  act  of  law- 
lessness ever  committed  by  an    \merican  court. 

It- was  done  avowedly  to  prevent  the  Savages 
from  stuffing  the  ballot  boxes;  but  the  Savages 
—  as  I  have  related  "■  i  previovs  chapter  —  were 
not  wholly  intimidate^'.  Some  of  the  usual  frauds 
were  perpetrated  (though  in  a  much  milder  form 
than  usual)  and  the  Democrats  carried  the  elec- 
tions. All  the  candidates  on  the  Democratic 
county  ticket  were  returned,  excepting  Lindsley 
and  Rogers,  against  whom  I  had  made  a  cam- 
paign. The  Republican  Governor,  Peabody,  was 
defeated  for  re-election.  And  the  Senate  was 
given  a  Democratic  majority. 

Here  was  a  dangerous  slip  in  the  plans  of  the 
corporations.  A  constitutional  amendment  had 
been  carried,  by  which  the  number  of  Supreme 
Court  justices  was  to  be  increased  from  three  to 
seven.     Two  were  to  be  promoted  from  the  Court 


THE  SUPREME  COURT  207 

of  Appeals,  but  two  were  to  be  appointed.  A 
Democratic  Governor  would  have  the  appoint- 
ment of  these,  and  a  Democratic  Senate  would 
confirm  the  appointments.  There  was  no  time 
now  to  buy  up  the  Democratic  state  machine, 
even  if  it  could  be  bought  in  its  hour  of  triumph. 
Something  had  to  be  done.  It  was  done  —  and 
done  promptly. 

The  Supreme  Court  prosecuted  the  Savages 
for  "contempt"  and  imprisoned  them.  Then 
Gabbert  and  Campbell  —  with  Justice  R.  W. 
Steele  dissenting  —  ordered  that  certain  election 
precincts,  in  which  frauds  were  alleged,  be  not 
canvassed;  the  hundreds  of  honest  Democratic 
votes  in  these  precincts  were  thrown  out  with  the 
few  dishonest  ones;*  and,  by  eliminating  these 
votes,  the  Supreme  Court  succeeded  in  declaring 
elected  three  Republican  State  Senators,  eleven 
Republican  representatives,  and  the  entire  Repub- 
lican county  ticket  —  although  the  returns  showed 
that  the  Democrats  had  carried  the  county  by 
majorities  ranging  from,  two  to  five  thousand; 
and  even  with  all  the  "fraudulent"  votes  elimi- 
upted,  the  Democrats  would  have  won. 

But  this  was  not  the  end.  The  Democrats  still 
had  a  majority  of  two  in  the  Senate.  So  the 
State  Canvassing  Board,  upheld  by  the  Supreme 

*ln  a  subsequent  investigation  thousands  of  votes  that  had  been  held 
fraudulent  by  the  Supreme  Court  on  the  testimony  of  handwriting  experts 
were  proved  honest  and  valid  by  the  sworn  evidence  of  the  voters  who  had 
cast  them. 


SOS 


THE  BEAST 


Ifif 


Court  —  although  the  Board  had  proptrly  only 
clerical  powers  to  canvass  and  make  its  report  -  ■ 
illegally  threw  out  the  returns  from  certain  pre 
cincts  in  the  counties  of  Boulder  and  Las  Animas, 
and  issued  certificates  of  election  to  a  number  ot 
Republican  Senatorial  candidates,  and  so  manu- 
factured a  Republican   majority   in  the  Senate. 

Pardon  these  tiresome  details.  They  are  neces- 
sary to  make  plain  how  the  cards  were  "stacked." 
Without  them,  the  deal  that  followed  would  be 
as  bewildering  as  sleight-of-hand. 

The  constitutional  amendment  that  provided 
for  the  appointment  of  the  new  Supreme  Court 
justices  expressly  stated  that  the  court  so  con- 
stituted should  not  come  into  existence  until  the 
first  Wednesday  in  April,  1905,  when  Governor 
Peabody  would  have  been  out  of  office  and  his 
Democratic  successor  sworn  in.  Governor  Pea~ 
body  did  not  wait  for  the  passing  of  April's  Fool 
day.  He  su  bmitted  the  names  of  the  new  justices  to 
the  manufactured  Senate  and  got  them  confirmed. 
Finally  —  as  the  climax  and  triumphant  crown 
of  the  whole  conspiracy  —  the  Supreme  Court 
assisted  the  manufactured  Legislature  in  prevent- 
ing Alva  Adams,  the  Democratic  governor- 
elect,  from  holding  his  office  —  although  he  had 
been  elected  by  a  plurality  of  more  than  10,000 
votes.  And,  after  an  interval  of  legisjative  uproar, 
with  troops  ready  in  the  Capitol  and  the  machin- 
ery  of   government   at   a   standstill  —  while    the 


THE  SUPREME  COURT  209 

corporations  quarrelled  among  themselves— a  sort 
of  compromise  was  effected  by  which  Adams  was 
unseated,  Peabody  was  declared  elected,  his  ap- 
pointments to  the  Supreme  Court  were  accepted, 
but  he  himself  resigned  in  favor  of  his  lieutenant,' 
Jesse  McDonald. 

All  this,  no  doubt,  was  nothing  to  the  public 
but  more    political    chicanery.     I   knew   that   it 
was  corporation  treason;  and  this  is  how  I  knew: 
At  the  time  that  Governor  Peabody  was  con- 
sidering the  appointment  of  the  new  judges,  I 
happened  to  mention    to    Mr.   W.  G.  Brown- 
then   president  of  one  of  the  Denver   banks  — 
that  I  intended   to   speak   to  the   Governor  on 
behalf  of  a  friend  who  was  seeking  a  place  on  the 
Supreme  Court  bench.    "The  Governor?"     Mr 
Brown  said.     "Why,  he  hasn't  anything  to  do 
with  It.     Don't  you  know  the  deal  is  to  let  the 
committee  name  the  judges?" 
I  asked  "What  committee?" 
"A  committee,"  he  explained,   "agreed  upon 
by  the  various  'interests.'  "    He  named  the  men. 
They  had  been  chosen,  he  said,  by  the  public  utility 
corporations  of  Denver,  the  railroads,   and   the 
Colorado  Fuel  and  Iron  Co.     "If  your  friend  is 
to  have  any  show,"  he  told  me,  "he  will  have  to 
see  this  committee.     They  are  'the  big  ones'  who 
will  pass  on  his   qualifications.     He'll   be  espe- 
cially strong  if  he  can  get  Mr.  Evans's  endorse- 
ment.    He'll  have  to  satisfy  these  gentlemen  that 


210 


THE  BEAST 


IIP 


he's  'right'  on  certain  questions  in  which  they're 
interested.  And  if  he  can  be  depended  on  to 
decide  such  matters  'right,'  he'll  he  considered. 
Otherwise,  he  needn't  apply.  They're  going  to 
have  a  court  they  can  depend  on." 

What  were  these  important  questions  in  which 
the  corporations  were  "interested"?  The  most 
important,  Mr.  Brown  said,  was  the  right  of  the 
Governor  to  declare  martial  law  in  case  of  labour 
disturbances  so  that  the  right  of  habeas  corpus 
might  be  suspended  and  the  labourers  prevented 
from  applying  to  the  courts  in  defence  of  their 
liberties. 

And  it  was  not  Mr.  Brown  alone  who  admitted 
the  deal  with  Governor  Peabody.  Peabody's 
nephew,  Mr.  Geo.  P.  Steele,  was  a  candidate  for 
one  of  these  appointments,  and  his  friends  had 
given  it  out  that  the  Governor  had  promised  him 
the  place.  One  day  I  met  Steele  on  the  comer  of 
17th  and  Welton  streets  and  asked  him  why  he 
had  not  been  appointed.  "Why,  Ben,"  he  said, 
"it  vas  the  darndest  farce  you  ever  heard  of. 
The  corporations  had  him  absolutely.  He  had 
to  appoint  Bailey  and  Goddard.  He  had  to 
appoint  whoever  the  corporations  wanted.  I 
wouldn't  go  up  there  unless  I  could  go  'straight.'  " 

Does  this  seem  incredible?  Read  then  the 
Colorado  Supreme  Court  Reports,  Volume  35, 
page  325  and  the.-eabouts.  You  will  find  it 
charged  that  the  Colorado  and  Southern  Rail- 


m- 


THE  SUPREME  COURT  811 

way   Company,    the    Denver   and    Rio    Grande 
Railway  Company,  and  the  public  service  cor- 
porations of  Denver  had  an  agreement  with  Gov- 
ernor Peabody  whereby  these  corporations  were 
to  be  allowed  to  select  the  judges  to  be  appointed 
to  the  Supreme  Bench.     You  will  find  it  charged 
that  Luther  M.  Goddard  had  been  selected  as  a 
proper  judge  by  the  public  utility  corporations, 
but  that  the  two  railroad  companies  objected  to 
him  as  "too  closely  allied  with  the  interests  of  the 
Denver  City  Tramway  Company  and  the  Denver 
Union    Water   Company."     "As   a   last   resort," 
the  statement  continues,  "the  agent  and  repre- 
sentative of  the  said  Colorado  and  Southern  Rail- 
way Company  was  induced  to,  and  did,  after  mid- 
night on  Sunday,  the  eighth  day  of  January,  and 
at  about  one  o'clock  in  the  morning  on  Monday 
the  ninth  day  of  January,  repair  to  the  home  of 
the  said  Luther  M.  Goddard,  in  a  carriage,  calling 
him  out  of  bed,  having  then  and  there  such  con- 
versation  with  the  said  Goddard  that  the  said 
rr.-'lway  corporations,  through  their  agents,  with- 
drew their  opposition   to   his  confirmation,   and 
they  did  on  said  morning  at  about  three  o'clock 
thereof  announce  to  the  remainder  of  tlie  said 
corporations  through  their  said  agents  and  repre- 
sentatives, that  their  opposition  had  been  with- 
drawn, and  the  withdrawal  of  the  said  opposition, 
having  been  announced,  the  said  Senate  of  the 
Fifteenth  General  Assembly  did,  almost  immedi- 


212 


THE  BEAST 


ately  upon  its  convening  on  the  morning  of  Mon- 
day, the  ninth  day  of  January,  confirm  the  said 
nomination  of  the  said  Goddard." 

The  brief  containing  these  charges  is  signed 
by  Senator  Henry  M.  Teller,  Ex-Cabinet  Min- 
ister and  United  States  Senator,  and  by  Ex-Gov- 
ernor Thomas  mting  as  counsel  for  Senator  T. 
M.  Patterson,  who  had  made  the  charges  in  his 
paper,  The  Rocky  Mountain  News.  These  gentle- 
men offered  to  prove  the  charges  l)efore  the  court, 
but  the  court,  in  a  most  amazing  decision,  refused 
the  offer,  held  that  no  matter  hovy  true  such 
charges  might  be,  it  was  "contempt  of  court" 
to  make  them,  and  fined  Senator  Patterson  $1,000! 

Senator  Patterson,  rising  to  receive  his  sentence, 
protested  against  it,  to  the  court,  in  one  of  the 
most  scathing  arraignments  ever  addressed  to  an 
American  bench  of  justice.  "If  constructive  con- 
tempt," he  ended,  "is  to  be  maintained  as  it  has 
been  maintained  by  this  court,  it  can  simply  mean 
.  .  .  that  we  have  in  each  of  the  states  of  the 
union  a  chosen  body  of  men  who  may  commit 
any  crime,  who  may  falsify  justice,  who  may  defy 
the  constitution  and  spit  upon  the  laws,  and  yet 
no  man  dare  make  known  the  facts.  .  .  . 
From  this  time  forward  I  will  devote  myself  .  .  . 
to  deprive  every  man  and  every  body  of  men  of 
such  tyrannical  power,  of  such  unjust  and  danger- 
ous prerogative." 

His  protest  was  no  more  vigorous  than  Justice 


THE  SUPREME  COURT  813 

Steele's  dissent  from  the  decision  ~  Justice  Rob- 
ert W.  Steele,  the  judge  whom  I  had  succeeded  in 
the  County  Court  —  an  honest  man  who  was  in 
the  minority  in  so  many  of  the  corporation  cases 
that  came  before  the  court.  He  has  fought  the 
{Kjople's  fight  for  years,  often  single-handed,  in 
that  court;  and  he  is  still  fighting.  But  his  term 
of  office  expires  in  the  fall  of  1910,  and  he  will 
have  as  much  chance  of  being  reelected  as  any 
other  honest  man  who  is  not  "right"  on  those 
"important  questions"  in  which  the  corporations 
are  "interested."* 

I  understood  why  the  corporations  wished  the 
Governor  to  have  the  right  to  declare  martial 
law  and  suspend  the  habeas  corpus  in  case  of 
labour  disturbances.  The  Cripple  Creek  "labour 
war"  was  being  waged.  I  do  not  hi  '  a  brief 
for  either  the  miners  or  the  mine  owners  in  that 
struggle.  I  do  not  defend  the  lawlessness  of 
either.  But  I  went  to  Cripple  Creek  at  the  time 
and  talked  to  the  laboxu-ing  men  and  learned  that 
they  knew,  as  well  as  I  did,  who  controlled  the 
Supreme  Court  auvl  Governor  Peabody  and  the 
corrupt  Legislature  that  betrayed  the  people.  An 
intelligent  labom-er,  who  had  opposed  the  calling  of 
the  strike,  said  to  me:  "No  one  thing  ever  caused 
so   much   ill-feeling    among    the   labouring    men 

♦No  charge  of  corruption  agaimt  Judge  Campbell  is  here  made  or  implied. 
Even  the  labouring  men  during  these  boubles  recognized  that  Judge  Camp, 
bell's  decisions  were  those  of  an  honest  prejudice,  due  to  his  training  and 
his  temperament. 


«14 


THE  BEAST 


LiJi 


of  this  state  as  what  we  considered  the  treach- 
ery of  Judges  Gabbert  and  Goddard  in  deciding 
against  us  on  the  eight-hour  law!"  (Both  these 
judges  had  been  "Populists"  at  the  beginnings 
of  their  careers  and  had  l)een  first  elected  by  the 
votes  of  the  labouring  men.)  The  strike  claimed 
to  be  a  strike  for  an  eight-hour  day  in  certain 
mills.  The  Legislature  had  passed  an  eight-hour 
law,  but  the  Supreme  Court,  composed  at  that 
time  of  Campbell,  Gabbert  and  Goddard,  had 
declared  it  unconstitutional  —  although  the  Su- 
preme Court  of  the  United  States,  in  a  similar 
case,  had  held  ihe  contrary! 

When  the  question  of  the  validity  of  my  election 
of  the  fall  of  1904  came  before  the  Supreme  Court, 
my  counsel  argued  that  I  had  not  been  legally 
elected  in  the  spring  of  1904  —  because  the  charter 
convention  had  no  right  to  provide  for  the  elec- 
tions of  county  judge,  district  attorney,  or  district 
judge,  since  these  offices  had  been  specifically  ex- 
cepted from  the  jurisdiction  of  the  charter  couvm- 
tion  by  the  constitutional  amendment  that  provided 
for  the  convention.  But  the  Supreme  Court  calmly 
held  that  the  charter  convention  had  no  right  to  con- 
solidate any  county  office  with  a  municipal  office 
—  a  question  that  had  not  been  brought  before 
the  court  at  ill  in  this  case,  except  by  distant 
implication.  And  the  effect  of  this  decision  was 
to  throw  out  of  office  all  the  Democratic  county 
office  holders  who  had  been  elected  with  me  in 


THE  SUPREME  COURT  us 

the  .spring  of    1004.     They   ha.l    been    renomi- 
nated and  re8  ec-le,l  in  the  fall,  hut  the  action  of 
the  Supreme  Court,  in  throwing  out  the  precincts 
in  which  the  Democrats  had  ohtaine.l  their  majori- 
ties,  had  given  the  Repuhlic.ms  the  offi.cs.     And 
now  these  Dem,Kraf.s  found   themselves    on    the 
streets -the  very  Democrats   who  ha.l   "mi.xed 
It  up     m  the  hope  of  lo.sing  me  "in  the  .shufHe  " 
I  was  far  from  lest.     I  ha.l  lH.en  elected  twice 
by  both   parties.     If  „ne  election   was  not   valid 
the    other    wa.s.     If    one    party's    pluralitv    was 
declared  fraudulent.  I  had  still  all  the  votes' of  the 
other  party  to  elect  me.     I  could  laugh  at  the 
Beast,  Its  frauds  and  its  courts. 

But  I  did  not  feel  like  laughter.  Some  of  the 
decision.s  of  the  Supreme  Court  had  alreadv  had 
an  awful  result.  They  had  had  a  result  that  not 
only  convulsed  Colorado  l.ut  horrified  the  whole 
civilized  world. 

In  the  spring  of  1904,  Chas.  H.  Moyer,  presi- 
dent of  the  Western  Federation  of  Miners  was 
arrested  by  the  military  authorities  at  Ourlv  on 
a  charge  of  desecrating  the  American  flag  bv 
using  a  printed  representation  of  it  in  a  campaign 
handbill  He  had  obtained  a  writ  of  hibeS 
corpus  from  the  local  judge,  but  the  military 
authorities  m  power  in  the  strike  district  refused 
to  surrender  him  -  on  the  ground  that  his  "rea- 
sonable further  detention"  was  required  bv  "the 
ends  of  public  justice  and  the  restoration  of  pub- 


916 


THE  BEAST 


lie  tranquillity."  His  attorneys  appealed  to  the 
Supreme  Court  in  Denver,  and  the  judges  decided 
against  him  —  all  but  Judge  Steele  again. 

Judge  Steele  held,  in  his  dissenting  opinion: 
"If  one  may  be  restrained  of  his  liberty  without 
charges  being  preferred  against  him,  every  other 
guarantee  of  the  constitution  may  be  denied  him. 
When  we  deny  to  one,  however  wicked,  a  right 
plainly  guaranteed  by  the  constitution,  we  take 
that  same  right  from  every  one.  When  we  say 
to  Moyer:  'You  must  stay  in  prison,  because  tf 
we  discharge  you,  you  may  commit  a  crime,'  we 
say  that  to  every  other  citizen.  When  we  say  to 
one  governor:  'You  have  unlimited  and  arbi- 
trary power,'  we  clothe  future  governors  with 
that  same  power.  We  cannot  change  the  con- 
stitution to  meet  conditions.  We  cannot  deny 
liberty  to-day  and  grant  it  tomorrow.  We  can- 
not grant  it  to  those  theretofore  above  suspicion 
and  deny  to  those  suspected  of  crime,  for  the  con- 
stitution is  for  all  men  —  'for  the  favourite  at 
court,  for  the  countryman  at  plow'  —  at  all  times 
and  under  all  circumstances." 

The  corporations  and  their  court  did  not  think 
so.  Having  denied  the  labouring  man  his  repre- 
sentation in  the  Legislature  and  his  appeal  in  law, 
they  now  denied  him  his  most  elementary  con- 
stitutional right  to  liberty  itself.  What  happened  ? 
The  inevitable  happened.  Harry  Orchard  writes 
in  his  terrible  autobiography:   "They  wanted  us 


THE  SUPREME  COURT  217 

to  work  on  Judge  Gabbert  and  see  if  we  could  not 
bump  him  off,  as  they  were  very  bitter  against 
him— especially  Moyer.  Judge  Gabbert  was 
Chief  Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court,  and  had 
decided  against  Moyer  when  they  brought  him  to 
Denver  from  Telluride  on  a  writ  of  habeas  corpus, 
when  he  was  in  the  hands  of  the  militia."  And 
again :  "  They  were  very  bitter  against  Judge  God- 
dard,  as  they  said  he  had  written  up  most  of  the 
opinion  in  the  Moyer  habeas-corpus  case,  and  had 
been  instrumental  in  declaring  unconstitutional 
the  eight-hour  law  that  had  been  passed  by  the 
Legislature  a  few  years  previous,  when  he  was  on 
the  Supreme  Bench  before."  Lawlessness  had 
its  inevitable  result  in  lawlessness. 

As  I  walked  home,  one  midnight,  with  my 
friend  Dr.  C.  B.  James,  the  city  and  county 
physician  —  from  a  performance  of  "Dr.  Jekyll 
and  Mr.  Hyde"  — we  passed  Judge  Gabbert's 
house,  and  saw  on  the  porch  a  man  crouching, 
like  the  horrible  Hyde  himself,  at  the  sill  of  Gab- 
bert's front  window,  while  a  confederate  watched 
from  the  shadow  of  a  veranda  pillar.  These 
two  men  —  as  we  have  since  come  to  believe  — 
were  Harry  Orchard  and  Steve  Adams.  They 
made  off  rapidly  across  the  lawn  and  down  the 
street  as  we  approached;  and  after  trying  in  vain 
to  find  a  policeman  we  met  Judge  Gabbert's  step- 
son returning  home  and  we  warned  him  of  the 
burglars,  as  we  thought  they  were.     Some  time 


218 


THE  BEAST 


before  this,  Dr.  James  had  received  a  telephone 
message  from  an  unknown  friend  in  the  middle 
of  the  night  telling  him  not  to  w^Ik  down  to  the 
Capitol  in  the  norning  with  Judge  Gabbert,  as 
had  been  his  custom;  and  Orchard's  confession 
shows  that  he  and  Adams  were  then  planning  to 
kill  Gabbert,  with  a  bomb,  on  his  way  to  court. 
They  killed,  by  accident,  a  man  named  Walley, 
in  a  vacant  lot  a  few  blocks  from  my  house.  I 
heard  the  explosion  of  the  bomb.  They  planted 
another  bomb  at  Judge  Goddard's  gate,  but  it 
did  not  explode.  They  tried  to  waylay  and 
shoot  Governor  Peabody,  but  they  failed. 

And  why  did  they  do  these  things  ?  Why  were 
murderous  outrages  committed  in  Colorado  that 
are  only  paralleled  by  the  outrages  of  the  revolu- 
tionists in  despotic  Russia?  Because  like  con- 
ditions breed  like  events.  The  government  of 
Russia  has  been  described  as  "a  despotism  tem- 
pered by  assassination";  and  the  government 
of  Colorado,  in  the  spring  of  1905,  was  just  that! 
The  crimes  of  Orchard  —  that  horrified  the  whole 
country  and  blackened  the  name  of  Colorado  in 
the  estimation  of  the  world  —  were  the  inevi- 
table result  of  the  crimes  of  the  corporations  that 
made  the  government  of  Colorado  an  insufferable 
despotism  of  lawless  men.  The  crime  of  the 
oppressed  is  a  demand  for  justice! 

From  my  chambers,  in  which  I  am  writing  now, 
I  can  look  out  my  window  and  see  the  little  shop 


THE  SUPREME  COURT  219 

in  which  Orchard  says  the  casings  of  his  bombs 
were  prepared;   and  from  another  window  I  can 
see  the  Majestic  Building  from  which  the  cor- 
porations govern  the  state.     What  a  government! 
And  what  an  opposition!     The  millionaire  uses 
his  power  of  wealth  to  rob  and  starve  and  pollute 
a    whole    community    with    protected    vice    and 
thwarted  justice  and  laws  defied  —  and  the  exas- 
perated labourer,  finding  himself  denied  the  com- 
mon   rights   of   man,    declares   war   against   his 
oppressors  with  the  bomb  and  the  bullet!     Who 
is  the  more  to  blame  ■     the  criminal  who  makes 
the  conditions  or  the  criminal  who  is  made  hy 
the  conditions?     The  one  goes  in  broadcloth  to 
his  church,  sleek,  smug,  respected,  feared  for  his 
power  and  honoured  for  his  successes.     The  other, 
branded  with  his  guilt,  a  moral  leper  by  his  own 
confession,  imprisoned  for  life,  a  shuddermg  hor- 
ror to  the  whole  world,  appeals  to  the  same  God 
for  forgiveness  Whose  church  the  man  of  wealth 
so  proudly  enters  —  one  of  its  "pillars,"  its  power- 
ful benefactor,  its  generous  patron,  its  bland  com- 
municant.   I  do  not  presume  to  voice  the  judg- 
ment of  Providence  upon  these  two  men.     I  do 
not  even  predict  the  decrees  of  human  justice. 
But  if  I  had  to  make  my  choice  of  their  fates  and 
elect  between  the  burdens  of  their  iniquities,  I 
should  prefer  to  crouch  before  the  altar  of  Orch- 
ard's prison  chapel,  trembling,  with  all  his  clotted 
murders  on  my  hands. 


( 


CHAPTER  XIII 


THE  BEAST  AND  REFORM 

CJO  ENDED  the  great  conspiracy  of  the  cor- 

1904.  And  with  the  triumph  of  that  conspiracy, 
the  government  of  Colorado  changed  from  a 
democracy  to  a  plutocratic  oligarchy.  I  saw  it 
then;  I  have  seen  it  more  clearly  since.  I  saw 
that  the  people  of  Colorado  were  not  free  citizens, 
but  enfranchised  serfs.  They  could  be  killed  by 
their  masters  with  impunity,  and  the  jury  would 

a  political  office  unless  he  served  their  masters  - 
and  my  own  election  was  merely  "rhe  exception 
that  proved  the  rule."  If  they  rose,  in  mass,  to 
vote  for  an  eight-hour  law,  and  the  Legislature 
passed  such  a  law,  their  masters,  through  the 
mouth  of  the  Supreme  Court,  declared  it  Lc^n! 

tutional  amendment  permittmg  such  a  law,  their 
masters  through  the  Legislature,  refused  to  pass 
It.  If  they  rebelled  agamst  this  tyranny,  and 
went  on  strike  for  their  constitutional  righJs.  and 
were  lawless  ,n  their  opposition  to  lawlessness, 
then-  masters,  through  the  Governor,  called  out 
an 


THE  BEAST  AND  REFOBt».I        m 

ItH'!5''"'*'r'P'°^'*^  *^^  '««*  P'^t^ice  of  justice 

Colorado  had  no  more  right  to  "life,  liberty  and 
the  pursuit  of  happiness  "  tha«  a  yelW  dog  on  tJe 

and  Lr    ^"^'/^'"V"  '^^  '^^'^"^  °f  his  master 
and  ate  scraps  from  his  hand 

And  it  was  not  only  that  the  American  citizen 
Lehatn  "^  "°  "^•''^  "^  ''«'*•'>«*  »»•«  ".asters" 

masters.  I  had  seen  ,t  in  numerous  cases  that 
i«I  T!,  V°  "^  '=""^-  ^°'  ---"Ple:  a  junk 
lead'Lt  ,^^°  '"P'°^'"^  '°y^  *°'*-'  bis  of 
advis!^?h''°'  '""'  '""^  ^^t-  t^yi-g  the  boys  I 
adv  sed  the  prosecution  of  their  employer.  He 
retamed  a  corporation  lawyer  to  defend  him  before 

shin  .1'^^^  P^^"  "'^^  -P'^-d  to  a  jute! 
ship;  and  the  case  against  him  was  dropped  Or 
agam:    a  man  was  once  accused  in  my  court  of 

he  was  a  regular  degenerate";  and  his  lawyer 
offered  to  plead  guilty  if  I  would  put  him^on 
probation      I    refused    to.     A    new    lawye     was 

imJ^r,  r"'^  Attorney -and  there  was  an 
mmedmte  change  m  the  feryour  of  the  prosecu- 

myestigated  the  charge  and  found  no  evidence 
agamst  the  man;  and  I  was  compelled,  under  "he 
law.  to  accept  a  "nolle."  which  amounted  to  a 


23« 


THE  BEAST 


dismissal  of  the  case.  This  sort  of  thing  pre- 
vailed even  in  divorce  suits.  It  prevailed  in  every 
sort  of  suit  that  a  corporation  lawyer  could  be 
retained  to  defend  before  a  corporation  judge. 
Just  as  the  king's  favourites  in  France,  before  the 
Revolution,  were  free  to  commit  any  outrage  upon 
the  citizens  who  had  no  court  influence,  so,  in 
Colorado,  the  favourite  who  wore  the  livery  of  the 
corporations  —  or  was  able  to  retain  a  favourite 
who  did  —  could  spit  upon  the  freeman,  could 
debauch  the  son  of  the  freeman,  could  violate  the 
daughter  of  the  freeman,  and  then  appeal  confi- 
dently to  the  corporation  ministers  of  justice  to  pro- 
tect him.  Our  boasted ' '  government  of  the  people, 
for  the  people  and  by  the  people"  had  passed  away. 
Does  this  seem  an  intemperate  statement  of  the 
facts  ?  I  hope  not.  It  would  distress  me  to  have 
any  one  suspect  me  of  impatience.  I  am  trying 
to  relate  my  experiences,  in  the  Jungle,  with  the 
Beast,  as  dispassionately  as  possible,  without  any 
colour  of  prejudice,  coolly,  for  the  benefit  of  those 
of  you  who  live  sheltered  private  lives,  purred  to 
in  prosperity.  I  do  not  raise  my  voice.  If  I  say 
that  you  are  not  a  citizen  of  a  democracy  *:  it  a  sort 
of  enfranchised  house  slave  of  an  oligarchy  of  cor- 
porate wealth,  I  say  it,  believe  me,  in  the  politest 
tone  conceivable.  It  is  merely  a  condition  which 
I  wish  you  to  recognize.  If,  after  you  have  recog- 
nized it,  you  are  still  content  to  sit  by  your  fire- 
side and  leave  politics  to  your  mcsters,  at  least 


THE  BEAST  AND  REFORM        223 

you  can  do  so  without  having  been  unnecessarily 
annoyed.  If  the  democracy  is  to  die,  by  all  means 
let  it  die  decently,  with  resignation,  on  a  feather 
bed.  Let  it  not  mrke  a  noisy  finish,  like  a  stuck 
pig,  dragged  from  its  comfortable  pen  and  pros- 
perity's full  hog  trough,  to  have  its  throat  cut, 
squealing  shrilly,  while  the  rest  of  the  world 
jeers. 

In  the  spring  of  1905,  I  admit,  I  was  not  so 
philosophical.  I  had  just  come  through  a  hot 
campaign  and  my  blood  was  still  intemperate. 
I  was  prepared  to  stir  up  an  insurrection  among 
my  fellow-serfs,  and  I  believed  that  such  an  insur- 
rection could  be  made  successful.  I  had  not  been, 
for  so  long,  an  opponent  of  the  Beast  without 
having  learned  the  sources  of  its  power.  I  had  seen 
that  whenever  it  was  attacked  in  its  jungle,  it 
took  refuge  up  a  tree.  I  believed  that  we  could 
fell  that  tree,  with  the  animal  in  its  top  —  bring 
the  brute  down,  stunned  by  its  fall  —  and  dis- 
patch it  where  it  lay,  before  it  could  recover.  In 
other  words,  I  had  seen  that  the  corporations 
derived  their  power  from  their  control  of  politics, 
and  that  they  controlled  politics  largely  through 
the  election  laws.  If  we  could  reform  the  election 
laws  so  as  to  make  the  will  of  the  people  effective,  we 
could  overturn  the  throne  of  the  plutocracy  and 
have  the  king  sprawling  at  the  feet  of  his  subjects. 
After  that,  we  could  make  what  terms  with  him 
we  pleased. 


224 


THE  BEAST 


*  .1 
1 


as^ 


We  needed,  first  of  all,  a  registration  law  to  pre- 
vent ballot-box  stuffing,  so  that  Boss  Evans  might 
not  have  voters  "good  for  500  votes"  each,  while 
the  people  had  only  voters  of  a  vote  apiece.  Then, 
if  we  could  get  a  real  Australian  ballot  law,  with 
a  headless  ballot  —  so  that  the  people  might  be 
able  to  vote  for  candidates  instead  of  parties  — 
we  would  make  it  possible  for  an  independent 
man  to  succeed  in  an  independent  campaign,  and 
prevent  Boss  Evans  from  using  the  name  of 
Roosevelt  or  Bryan  to  elect  a  ticket  of  corrup- 
tionists.  Next,  with  an  effective  direcv  ^rimary 
law,  we  could  abolish  the  machine  caucus  and 
convention  —  in  which  the  corporations  choose 
the  candidates  for  whom  the  people  are  to  be 
allowed  to  vote  —  make  it  possible  for  the  voters 
to  choose  their  own  representatives  and  free  the 
honest  politician  from  the  necessity  of  going  to 
Big  Steve,  or  Boss  Speer,  or  any  other  corpora- 
tion favourite,  for  permission  to  aspire  to  a  poli- 
tical office.  And  finally,  with  a  "corrupt  prac- 
tices act,"  we  could  limit  campaign  expenses, 
make  it  unnecessary  to  appeal  to  the  wealthy 
corporations  for  contributions,  and  make  it  pos- 
sible for  an  independent  candidate  to  compete 
against  a  party  man  without  mortgaging  his  house 
or  selling  his  independence. 

In  short,  what  we  most  needed  —  and  do  still 
need  —  was  not  laws  against  trusts  and  corpora- 
tions, limiting  their  powers  and  restraining  their 


THE  BEAST  AND  REFOR^VI        225 

activities,  but  laws  for  the  people,  permitting  them 
to  use  their  power  and  restoring  to  them  the  tools  of 
democracy,  which  the  corporations  have  taken 
from  them.  It  is  useless  to  agitate  for  "govern- 
ment control  of  trusts"  as  long  as  the  trusts  are 
able,  through  our  machinery  of  elections,  to  con- 
trol the  government  that  is  to  control  them.  Once 
let  us  regain  control  of  our  legislatures,  our  courts 
and  our  public  officials  —  by  regaining  control 
of  the  process  of  electing  them  —  and  we  shall 
have  the  corporations  where  the  sans-culottes  had 
King  Louis  and  his  favourites  before  the  Reign 
of  Terror.     Then  'ware  the  figurative  guillotine! 

With  this  pleasing  prospect  in  my  hope,  I  began 
to  work  on  a  series  of  Ijjlls  to  reform  the  election 
laws,  and  I  began  to  stir  up  a  popular  demand  for 
such  laws  by  means  of  public  speeches,  newspaper 
articles  and  the  like.  And  because  this  same 
campaign  will  have  to  be  fought  in  every  state  in 
the  union  in  which  it  has  not  yet  been  fought,  I 
wish  to  chronicle  it  here  in  sufficient  detail  to 
explain  the  tactics  that  were  used  against  us,  the 
methods  by  which  we  succeeded  and  the  reasons 
for  which  we  failed. 

We  opened  fire  in  the  newspapers  —  and  espe- 
cially in  the  Denver  Post,  through  a  clever  edito- 
rial writer  named  Paul  Thieman  who  had  given 
me  a  vital  aid  in  my  two  previous  election  con- 
tests. The  Post  was  then  as  independent  as  a 
highwayman.    One   of    its    proprietors,    H.    H. 


226 


THE  BEAST 


'i       .  -! 


1 


Tammen,  had  begun  life  as  a  barkeeper,  and  h« 
would  himself  relate  how  he  had  made  money  by 
robbing  his  employer.  "  When  I  took  in  a  dollar," 
Tammen  said,  "  I  tossed  it  up  —  and  if  it  stuck  to 
the  ceiling,  it  went  to  the  boss."  He  had  a  frank 
way  of  making  his  vices  engaging  by  the  honesty 
with  which  he  confessed  them;  and  he  had 
boasted  to  me  of  the  amount  of  money  the  news- 
paper made  by  charging  its  victims  for  suppress- 
ing news-stories  of  a  scandalous  nature  in  which 
they  were  involved:  He  admitted  that  he  sup- 
ported me  merely  because  it  was  "the  popular 
thing  to  do"  —  it  "helped  circulation."  I  knew 
it  was  a  very  precarious  support,  although  the 
editorial  writer,  Paul  Thieman,  seemed  to  me 
an  honest  and  public-spirited  young  man. 

The  Rocky  Mountain  iwa,  the  oflBcial  organ 
of  the  Democratic  partv,  also  aided  us.  (It  was 
owned  by  Senator  Patterson.)  But  there  was  a 
wing  of  the  Democratic  party  for  which  it  could 
not  speak  —  the  corporation  machine  faction  led 
by  Boss  Speer  —  and  I  had  yet  to  learn  how  strong 
tha  faction  was.  The  Denver  Republican,  of 
course,  w»j  not  in  our  camp;  it  is  a  corporation 
organ  simply.  But  the  Republicans  were  not 
unwilling  to  have  the  popularity  of  the  children's 
court  t:  an  asset  of  their  ticket,  and  their  paper 
did  not  openly  oppose  our  reform  of  the  election 
laws. 

There,  then,  were  the  three  typical  newspapers 


THE  BEAST  AND  REFORM  2«7 
of  a  typical  American  city;  and  we  had  two  of 
them  with  us  and  one  preserving  a  sort  of  armed 
neutrality.  After  a  preliminary  cannonade  of 
articles  and  editorials,  ou-  reform  bills  were  given 
to  Senator  W.  W.  Booth,  whom  we  had  elected 
by  defeating  "Len"  Rogers;  and  Senator  Booth 
introduced  them  in  the  Senate. 

This  immediately  "developed"  the  position  of 
the  corporation  tools  in  the  Legislature.  The 
Republican  sub-boss,  George  Graham,  held  a  par- 
ley with  Senator  Booth,  and  Booth  reported  to 
us:  "They  say  there's  absolutely  no  hope  for  the 
direct  primary  law  or  the  Massachusetts  ballot. 
Neither  party  organization  will  stand  for  it.  But 
there's  been  a  big  fuss  about  padded  registration 
in  Denver  and  in  Pueblo,  and  something  may  have 
to  be  done  in  that  matter  for  fear  the  party  will  be 
injured.  I  think  we  can  get  them  to  give  us  a 
show  to  put  through  the  registration  reform,  but 
they  say  that  if  I  try  to  pass  the  other  two  bills, 
they'll  not  even  let  us  have  the  registration  law." 

I  understood,  of  course,  that  the  "they"  who 
spoke  were  the  corporation  representatives.  The 
Democratic  chairman,  Milton  Smith,  and  other 
Democrats,  like  Senator  Billy  Adams,  always 
faithful  to  the  public-service  corporations,  opposed 
the  bills  as  stubbornly  as  the  Republicans  did. 
The  corporation  lobbyists  worked  with  a  will 
against  them.  William  R.  Freeman,  a  corpora- 
tion lobbyist  whom  I  met  one  day  on  the  street. 


228 


THE  BEAST 


said  frankly,  in  reply  to  my  arguments  for  a  reform 
of  the  election  laws:  "Yes,  they  do  give  us  the 
power  to  rule  the  people,  but  why  shouldn't  we 
have  it?  You  know  the  corporations  give  this 
state  good  government.  Look  what  Speer  has 
done  for  Der,  >  or.  Suppose  the  corporations  have 
got  millions  of  dollars'  worth  of  franchises;  they 
kiio'v  how  to  use  them  and  the  people  don't. 
Now  be  honest!  You  know  the  people  aren't  fit 
to  govern  themselves.  If  the  corporations  of  this 
state  didn't  do  it  for  them,  what  kind  of  a  state 
would  we  have'"  He  pointed  to  some  work- 
ingmen  digging  in  the  street.  "Do  you  think  we 
are  going  to  be  ruled  by  a  lot  of  cattle  like  that  ? 
\Vliat  do  they  know  about  government  ?  No,  sir. 
We  rule,  and  we're  going  to  continue  to!" 

Freeman  was  frank.  The  men  in  the  Legisla- 
ture were  not.  They  had  been  elected  by  the 
votes  of  "the  people  not  fit  to  govern  themselves" 
and  it  was  necessary  to  add  hypocrisy  to  treason. 
The  bills  were  referred  to  committees  and  the 
doors  of  silence  were  locked  on  them.  We  bat- 
tered at  the  doors. 

Thus  far  the  corporations  had  been  apparently 
on  the  defensive,  entrenched  and  silent;  and  we 
were  preparing  to  push  the  assault,  when  sud- 
denly we  discovered  a  flank  movement  that  tad 
been  weeks  afoot  and  was  now  sweeping  in  tri- 
umphantly upon  us.  In  the  very  first  days  of  the 
session  my  old  law  partner,  whom  I  have  called 


THE  BEAST  AND  REFORM        229 

Senator  "Gardener,"  had  introduced  two  bills 
that  would  have  made  my  |)r- :»ion  as  County 
Judge  untenable,  and  one  of  tl  >  lis  had  almost 
passed  the  Senate  before  I  knew  that  it  had 
bcon  even  introduced.  They  provided  that  County 
Judges  in  counties  of  the  first  class  (which  referred 
only  to  Denver)  should  not  be  permitted  to  leave 
the  city  except  in  July,  and  should  not  be  allowed 
to  call  in  a  judge  to  assist  in  the  work  of  the  County 
Court.  It  was  humanly  impossible  for  one  man 
to  do  the  work  of  my  court,  and  Gardener  and  his 
corporation  masters  knew  it.  We  were  forced 
temporarily  to  use  all  our  efforts  in  the  Legislature 
to  defeat  these  "spite  bills,"  and  we  were  put  on 
the  defensive  thereby.  It  is  an  old  trick  of  the 
Beast,  but  an  effective  one. 

The  newspapers  came  to  our  rescue;  the  women 
held  meetings  in  their  clubs;  the  boys  marched 
through  the  streets  with  banners;  and  Senator 
Gardener  found  himself  beaten  upon  by  a  storm 
of  public  abuse  that  has  marked  him  for  life.  The 
people,  though  they  did  not  yet  see  the  Beast, 
saw  that  the  Juvenile  Court  was  in  danger,  and 
rallied  at  once  to  the  support  of  a  "moral  issue." 
(Woman's  suffrage  in  Colorado  has  done  that,  at 
least,  for  our  politics.)  The  women  packed  the 
legislative  committee  rooms  at  the  Capitol  when 
r  spoke  against  the  bills;  and  the  House  did  not 
dare  to  pass  them. 
A  few  days  before  this,  while  I  was  at  luncheoA 


230 


THE  BEAST 


in  a  restaurant,  Mr.  R.  D.  Thompson  —  the  law- 
yer under  whom  Gardener  and  I  had  served  our 
apprenticeship  —  came  to  the  table  at  which  I 
sat  and  gave  me  a  warning  from  Gardener.  If, 
(Gardener  had  said)  I  dared  to  say  anything  pub- 
licly that  would  reflect  on  him  or  any  of  his  friends 
they  would  "spend  a  thousand  dollars  in  circu- 
lating a  story"  that  would  ruin  me  in  the  estima- 
tion of  the  women,  and  end  my  career. 

"  Well,"  I  said, "  what  the  deuce  does  he  mean  ?" 

Mr.  Thompson  replied:  "I  don't  know.  He 
didn't  tell  me  any  more  than  that  —  and  he  said 
I'd  better  tell  you,  because  they  believe  you're 
going  to  go  before  the  House  at  the  hearing  on 
these  bills  and  make  some  statements  reflecting 
on  him  —  something  that  he  did,  which  you  claim 
is  the  animus  behind  these  bills." 

I  knew,  then,  that  Gardener  referred  to  the 
visit  he  had  made  to  me  in  my  home  and  his  request 
that  I  should  "job"  the  Springer  election  contest 
for  him.  I  went  straight  to  Gardener's  oflSce  to 
demand  what  he  meant  by  his  threat.  He  was 
not  in.  I  wrote  him  a  letter  and  told  him  that  if 
he  knew  anything  reflecting  on  my  character  it 
was  his  duty  to  make  it  public,  and  I  released  him 
from  every  confidential  or  friendly  obligation  to 
conceal  it.  He  wrote  in  reply  that  he  knew  noth- 
mg  against  me,  and  he  denied  having  made  the 
threat. 

This  was  all  very  well.    But  he  continued  to 


THE  BEAST  AND  REFORM        231 

circulate  his  slanders.  He  poured  them  into  the 
ear  of  Senator  William  L.  Clayton,  for  example, 
and  Senator  Clayton  repeated  them  to  me.  They 
came  to  the  knowledge  of  my  brother  and  my 
friends.  It  was  evident  that  the  Beast  had 
turned  "polecat"  again.  I  went  to  the  news- 
papers and  gave  them  the  whole  story  of  Garden- 
er's attempt  to  influence  me  into  jobbing  the  elec- 
tion cases  and  I  challenged  him  to  substantiate  any 
of  his  slanderous  charges  against  me.  In  other 
words,  I  set  the  dogs  of  publicity  upon  the  Beast 
and  drove  it  to  its  burrow. 

Do  you  think  I  was  done  with  it,  then  ?  Gentle 
reader,  you  do  not  know  the  "animal."  Slander 
is  one  of  its  choicest  and  most  efifective  weapons. 
Come  to  Denver  to-day  and  hear  some  sweet  and 
motherly  little  woman,  at  her  dinner  table,  among 
her  children,  tell  you,  "Yes,  I  voted  for  Judge 
Lindsey  —  in  spite  of  his  private  life."  Abomin- 
able stories  about  me,  circulated  privately,  are 
privately  believed,  despite  the  fact  that  there  is 
not  a  corporation  crook  in  Denver  who  would  not 
dance  with  joy  if  he  could  find  the  slightest  evi- 
dence on  which  to  base  a  charge  of  immorality 
against  me.  My  private  life  has  been  gone  over 
with  a  microscope.  I  have  been  followed  by 
detectives.  Faces  have  peered  in  my  library  win- 
dow at  night  when  I  have  been  sitting  there, 
talking  with  friends.  My  chambers  in  the  Court 
House  have  been  broken  into,  my  desk  drawers 


■4-31 


232 


THE  BEAST 


forced  open,  and  my  letter  files  searched.  Bribes 
have  been  offered  the  officers  of  my  court  to  find 
or  manufacture  evidence  of  my  moral  turpitude. 
Nothing  has  been  found  on  which  the  harpies 
could  build  even  a  presumption  of  guilt  that  would 
endure  the  tight.     And  yet  the  slanders  circulate! 

I  have  proof,  too,  that  they  are  deliberately 
circulated.  In  1904,  when  I  was  opposing  the 
election  of  "Len"  Rogers  and  District  Attorney 
Lindsley,  Paul  Thieman,  of  the  Post,  came  upon  a 
young  brood  of  ^anderous  lies  that  had  been 
hatched  out  at  the  Democratic  Club.  He  spoke  to 
a  politician  about  them.  "  You  know  Judge 
Lindsey,"  he  said.  "You  don't  really  believe 
those  stories,  do  you  ?" 

"No,"  the  politician  replied,  "but  we've  got  to 

get    the    little some    way.      There'll    be   a 

lot  of  people  believe  them."  And  he  described 
how  some  sensitive  reformer  in  San  Francisco  — 
whose  name  I  have  forgotten  —  had  been  over- 
whelmed by  just  such  calumnies. 

If  this  method  of  attack  were  peculiar  to  the 
Beast  in  Denver,  I  should  not  refer  to  it  here. 
But  do  you  know'what  stories  were  told  of  District 
Attorney  Jerome  in  New  York,  of  Senator  La  Fol- 
lette  in  Wisconsin,  of  Governor  Folk  in  Missouri, 
of  Heney  in  San  Francisco  and  even  of  President 
Roosevelt  ?  O  you  citizens  of  the  United  States — 
who  are  "not  fit  to  govern"  yourselves  —  the 
manufacture  and  circulation  of  these  stories  is 


THE  BEAST  AND  REFORM        233 

one  of  the  operations  of  the  powers  that  govern 
you.  It  is  this  defilement  that  has  helped  to  make 
our  politics  so  dirty.  It  is  your  credence  of  these 
lies  that  has  made  the  honour  of  public  office  so 
often  a  garment  of  torture  to  the  man  who  wears 
it.  Beware  your  Beast  when  it  turns  "pole- 
cat"! Remember  always  that  if  there  was  a 
word  of  honest  evidence  on  which  to  defend  these 
stories,  they  would  be  printed  in  every  corpora- 
tion newspaper  in  the  country! 

Well,  we  defeated  Senator  Gardener's  spite  bills 
and  turned  again  to  our  campaign  of  reform;  and 
by  this  time  it  was  evident  that  we  could  hope  for 
no  more  than  the  passage  of  our  registration  law. 
The  other  bills  were  pigeonholed  in  committees, 
guarded  by  corporation  representatives  like  the 
Democratic  Senator  "Billy"  Adams,  who  has  sat 
for  more  than  twenty  years  in  our  Senate,  sunken- 
lipped,  glint-eyed,  with  the  beak  of  a  buzzard, 
waiting  silently  like  an  old  scald-head  hawk  to 
pounce  upon  any  reform  measure  that  threatens 
the  "plum  tree"  of  the  corporations. 

But  our  registration  bill  apparently  had  a  chance 
of  becoming  law.  It  passed  along  quietly  through 
the  Senate  —  to  my  amazement  —  a  little  muti- 
lated now  and  then  by  an  amendment,  but  still 
effective.  I  watched  its  course  with  interest,  puz- 
zled by  its  success.  I  began  to  hope  that  the 
public  outcry  against  the  ballot  frauds  had  put 
the  lear  of  the  popular  wrath  into  the  hearts  of 


2S4 


THE  BEAST 


MM 


the  machine  politicians.  And  certamly  the  outcry 
had  been  loud.  We  had  defeated  the  Democratic 
candidate  for  District  Attorney  in  Denver,  and 
elected  a  Republican,  who  had  instituted  a  vigor- 
ous prosecution  of  the  Democratic  "stuffers." 
In  Pueblo,  the  Republican  District  Attorney  had 
been  defeated,  and  a^Democratic  District  Attorney 
was  prosecuting  the  Republican  "  stuflFers."  The 
public  wfis  applauding  both.  The  henchmen 
and  ward  heelers  and  even  some  sub-bosses  of 
both  parties  were  in  danger  of  the  penitentiary; 
and  on  the  wave  of  this  "reform  movement"  our 
new  law  seemed  to  be  borne  gaily  a'ong. 

And  then  the  mystery  was  explained  to  me  by 
Senator  W.  W.  Booth.  He  had  discovered  that 
the  two  corporation  bosses  had  come  together  and 
agreed  "to  swap  prisoners."  Our  registration 
bill  had  a  clause  that  repealed  the  old  registration 
law  "save  and  except  as  to  all  violations  thereof 
and  prosecutions  pending  thereunder";  and  when 
the  bill  came  up  for  the  final  vote,  this  "saving 
clause"  was  struck  out. 

I  hastened  at  once  to  see  Governor  McDonald, 
explained  the  plot  to  him,  and  besought  him,  upon 
receiving  the  mutilated  bill,  to  return  it  to  the 
Legislature  with  a  message  exposing  this  premedi- 
tated jail  delivery  and  demandbg  the  reinstate- 
ment of  the  "saving  clause."  He  replied  calmly 
that  the  facts  were  probably  as  I  had  related  — 
tha'  he  had  been  so  advised  from  other  sources. 


THE  BEAST  AND  REFORM        235 

(The  District  Attorney  in  Pueblo  had  telegraphed 
him  that  the  passage  of  the  amended  bill  would 
free  some  200  ballot-box  stuffers  against  whom 
there  were  indictments.)  But  he  said:  "You  can't 
get  the  law,  in  my  judgment,  unless  you  get  it 
m  this  way."  And  we  had  to  take  what  we 
could  get. 

The  ballot-box  stuffers  immediately  appealed 
to  the  Supreme  Court,  under  the  new  law,  for  a 
stay  in  the  proceedings  against  them.  The  judges 
decided  that  the  passage  of  the  new  law  repealed 
the  old  one,  and  they  held  that  since  the  clause 

save  and  except  as  to  all  violations  thereof"  had 
been  stricken  out  -  and  a  repeal  of  all  penalties 
for  crimes  thereunder  deliberately  inserted  —  it 
was  no  doubt  the  intention  of  the  Legislature  to 
grant  a  pardon  to  the  criminals.  We  lost  the 
thieves,  but  we  got  the  instrument  against  them- 
and  it  has  been  effective.  Billy  Green,  the  noto- 
rious election  crook,  has  since  bom  unwilling 
testimony  to  that  effect.  In  districts  ^  here  there 
had  been  5,000  voters  registered  in  the  old  days, 
less  than  1,000  were  now  on  the  books.  The 
corporations  had  lost  their  voters  "good  for  500 
votes  apiece,"  and  the  people  of  Colorado  were 
one  step  nearer  freedom. 

I  was  elated.  We  had  not  only  forced  a  reform, 
but  it  proved  practical;  and  of  all  our  bills  the 
registration  measure  was  the  only  one  of  whose 
effect  there  had  been  any  question.     Our  direct 


286  THE  BEAST 

primary  law  was  after  Senator  La  Follette's  ideas, 
some  of  which  had  been  adopted  in  Wisconsin. 
The  headless  ballot  law  had  shown  its  strength 
in  Massachusetts.  If  we  could  get  those  two 
laws,  now,  we  should  be  able  to  hear  Lincoln's 
Gettysburg  address  read  in  Colorado  without 
turning  pale. 


CHAPTER  XIV 


A  CITY  PILLAGED 

TTAVE   I  convinced  you  yet?    Do  you  still 
M.  X     think  I  am  crying  "Wolf!    Wolf!"  when 
there  is  no  wolf,  or  do  you  believe  that  we  indeed 
do  have  our  fabled  dragon,  to  which  some  of  us 
are  daily  sacrificed  -  that  lives  upon  us -that 
the  daughters  of  the  poor  are  fed  to,  no  less  than 
the  sons  of  the  rich?    Or  do  you  think  that  it  is. 
after  all,  a  rather  harmless  brute  whom  some  of 
us  m  Colorado  have  goaded  to  a  natural  rage  — 
a  domestic  animal  properly  — a  milch  cow,  per- 
haps, that  has  to  have  its  fodder  but  repays  us  in 
the  rich  cream  of  prosperity  ?    Do  you  agree  with 
the  candid  Freeman  that  government  by  corpora- 
tions is  not  so  bad  a  thing  ?    Then  let  me  -  before 
I  proceed  with  the  story  of  our  struggle  for  a  reform 
of  our  election  laws  -  let  me  add  one  more  instance 
of  what  that  kind  of  government  entails.    Let  me 
,7J:i  *'  l^^'^'""  ™y  court  room  in  the  spring 
of  1906.    Let  me  put  you  on  the  bench  there  to 
judge  It,  and  decide. 

Under  the  constitutional  amendment  that  had 
granted  the  city  of  Denver  in  1902  the  right  to 
make  its  own  charter,  it  had  been  provided  that 

U7 


238  THE  BEAST 

the  citizens  should  dispose  of  franchises  to  public 
service  corporations  by  the  direct  vote  of  the  tax- 
paying  electors,  and  not,  as  in  the  past,  through 
the  City  Council.    In  1906  the  Denver  Gas  and 
Electric  Company  applied   for   a   franchise  for 
twenty  years,  and  the  tramway  company  applied 
for  an  extension  of  some  of  its  franchbes,  without, 
however,  waiving  its  claims  to  a  perpetual  fran- 
chise.   The  gas  company  wished  also  the  power 
to  take  over  the  electric  plant  of  a  local  company 
that  by  its  charter  oould  not  sell  except  to  the  city; 
and  the  Denver  and  Northwestern  Railroad  wished 
an  entrance  to  the  city  and  a  right  of  way.    For 
these  monopoly  rights  in  the  streets  of  Denver 
nothing  was  offered  to  the  citizens  of  Denver 
except  by  the  gas  company,  which  agreed  to  pay 
$50,000  per   annum,  and   by  the   street   railway 
company,  which   engaged   itself  to  pay  the  city 
$60,000  a  year  on  condition  that  a  certain  part  of 
the  money  be  spent  on  the  public  parks  and  for 
park  amusements  (to  which,  of  course,  the  tramway 
company  would  carry  the  crowds!). 

These  franchises  were  voted  upon  in  the  spring 
elections.  Before  election  H  ■  it  began  to  be  freely 
charged  that  in  the  oflSces  the  County  Asses- 
sor and  the  County  Treasurti,  where  the  lists  of 
tax-paying  electors  were  being  made  up,  great 
numbers  of  citizens  were  being  assessed  upon  triv- 
ial articles  of  personal  property,  so  that  they 
might  be  qualified  to  vote.    It  was  charged,  loo. 


A  CITY  PILLAGED  2S9 

that  "fake"  tax  receipts  were  being  issued  to 
employees  of  the  utility  corporations.  And  a 
league  of  citizens,  through  their  lawyers,  at  once 
applied  to  the  District  Court  (Judge  Frank  T. 
Johnson'*')  for  a  writ  similar  to  that  issued  by  the 
Supreme  Court  in  1904  against  the  "Savages," 
to  prevent  election  frauds.  Judge  Johnson  held 
that  if  the  Supreme  Court  could  grant  such  a  writ 
the  District  Court  could  do  the  same. 

He  issued  it.  The  elections  were  held,  and 
on  the  face  of  the  returns  the  franchises  were 
granted. 

But  the  majority  in  favour  of  the  grant  was  very 
small  —  ninety-nine  for  the  tramway  franchise  and 
about  five  hundred  for  the  gas  franchise  on  the 
official  recount.  The  tax-receipt  frauds  were  evi- 
dent. Hundreds  of  votes  had  been  cast  upon 
taxes  of  a  few  cents  levied  on  almost  worthless 
land  that  lay  out  on  the  prairies.  And  the  league 
of  citizens,  under  Judge  Johnson's  writ,  applied 
for  an  investigation  in  his  court.  He  decided  to 
hold  it. 

Subpoenas  were  issued  to  the  boys  who  had 
voted  on  the  "ten-cent"  tax  receipts  and  to  the 
woman  in  the  Treasurer's  office  who  had  made 
out  these  receipts.  The  woman  promptly  fled 
ttom  twvn.  The  County  Treasurer  rose  from 
his  sick  bed  to  deny  responsibility  for  having 

*Jud{(e  Jofaiuon  did  his  duty  to  the  community  bravely  in  these  cases. 
The  System  crushed  him  at  the  next  election. 


240 


THE  BEAST 


issued  the  receipts,  discharged  the  chief  clerk 
under  whose  instructions  the  work  had  been  done, 
collapsed  m  his  ofiBce  and  died  that  same  after- 
noon at  his  home.  It  was  charged  that  more 
than  2,000  fraudulent  receipts  had  been  issued. 
It  was  proved  that  the  receipts  had  been  isi^ued 
wholesale  and  distributed  among  the  clerks  of  the 
gas  company  office.  The  clerks,  called  to  the 
witness  stand,  either  perjured  themselves  by  swear- 
ing that  they  had  bought  the  land  through  Mr. 
Frank  W.  Freuauff  of  the  gas  company,  or 
practically  confessed  their  guilt  by  refusing 
to  testify  lest  they  might  incriminate  them- 
selves —  a  privilege  that  every  crimmal  has  under 
the  law. 

Does  this  sound  merely  technical?  Ah,  you 
should  have  been  in  that  court  and  watched  those 
poor  boys  —  honest  sons  of  good  families,  who 
had  been  driven  at  the  bidding  of  their  employers 
to  commit  a  crime  —  standing  there  before  the 
bar  of  justice,  admitting  their  shame  while  their 
wives  and  mothers  watched  with  tears  in  their 
eyes.  You  should  have  heard  them  floundering 
through  their  perjuries,  red-faced  and  guilty, 
while  the  officers  of  the  gas  company  watched 
them  with  a  cynical  smile.  And  you  should 
have  seen  Henry  L.  Doherty,  president  of  the 
gas  company,  when  he  was  called  to  the  stand 
and  refused  to  testify  —  refused  to  do  for  him- 
self what  he  had  let  these  boys  do  for  him  —  and 


A  CITY  PILLAGED  241 

with  a  contemptuous  sneer  on  his  face  denied 
the  jurisdiction  of  the  court  and  would  eive  no 
evidence  before  it. 

That  court  represented  the  sovereign   power  of 
the  people.    But  Henry  L.  Doherty  was  protected 
by    the    sovereign    power   of   the  Beast.     That 
court  had  the  right  under  the  law  to  hear  the  case 
and  give  judgment  upon  it;  and  the  question  of 
Its  jurisdiction  should   then  have  been  decided 
upon  appeal.    But  Henry  L.  Doherty  had   the 
lawless   power  of   the  Beast   to    smile   at   court 
procedure,  to  despise  law,  and  to  teach  anarchy  by 
example.     Judge  Johnson  sentenced  him  for  con- 
tempt.    He  went  out  smiling  in  the  custody  of  a 
deputy  sheriff.    One  of  his  attorneys  rushed  to 
the  telephone  and  called  up  the  Clerk  of  the 
Supreme  Court  and  said  in  the  voice  of  a  man 
talkingto  his  office  boy,  "Hurry  up  with  that  writ." 
Doherty  made  a  triumphal  descent  of  the  Court 
House  staircase,  smiled  at  by  the  crowds  in  the 
halls,  as  if  he  were  the  hero  of  some  huge  practi- 
cal joke  that  was  admirable  in  its  insolence;   and 
he  was  taken  by  the  Sheriff  to  a  neighbouring 
hotel  where  he  waited  until  Judge  Gabbert  directed 
his  release  under  a  writ  of  habeas  corpus  —  a 
proceeding  which  the  Supreme  Court  itself  after- 
ward repudiated  as  illegal. 

However,  the  Supreme  Court  granted  a  tempo- 
rary writ  restraining  Judge  Johnson  from  proceed- 
ing with  his  investigation;  and  later,  a  majority 


24S 


THE  BEAST 


of  the  judges  of  the  Court  made  that  v  rit  perma- 
nant  and  so  held  that  Judge  Johnson  had  no  right 
to  do  for  the  people  in  1906  wLut  the  Supreme 
Court  had  done  —  for  whom  ?  —  in  1904.  Judges 
Steele  and  Gunter  dissented.  They  held  that 
though  the  action  of  the  Supreme  Court  in  1904 
was  "without  precedent"  and  "not  based  upon 
any  recognized  rule  of  juity  jurisprudence,"  it 
was  "nevertheless,  until  reversed,  the  law  of  this 
state."  They  held  that  the  decision  of  the 
Supreme  Court  in  10O4  declared  that  it  was  "iu 
the  power  of  a  court  of  equity  to  supervise  elections 
by  injunction."  They  held  that  the  Supreme 
Court  could  not  claim  such  a  right  for  itself  and 
deny  the  same  right  to  the  District  Court,  for  by 
doing  so  the  Supreme  Court  "arrogates  to  itself 
an  exclusiveness  expressly  disavowed  in  many 
other  opinions  and  assumes  a  superiority  denied 
it  by  the  constitution."  The  other  judges  over- 
rode this  dissent.  They  did  not  propose  to  strain 
at  a  gnat  after  having  swallowed  a  camel.  They 
denied  Judge  Johnson's  jurisdiction,  and  his 
investigation  collapsed. 

Balked  there,  the  league  of  citizens  applied  for 
a  grand  jury  investigation;  but  since  their  com- 
plaint alleged  a  conspiracy  of  the  corporations  to 
buy  up  and  control  both  parties  in  the  elections, 
the  League  asked  the  appointment  of  a  special 
Sheriff  and  a  special  District  Attorney  on  the  case. 
Judge  Mullins  granted    the    investigation,    and 


A  CITY  PILLAGED  243 

appointed  officers  >a  j  'ace  of  the  suspected  Sheriff 
and  District  Attorney  Stidger.  Another  appeal 
was  taken  to  the  Supreme  Court,  and  the  Court 
again  inter  vniied  and  stopped  the  proceedings,  on 
the  ground  that  the  Sheriff  and  the  District  Attor- 
ney could  not  be  displaced  —  in  the  face  of  Justice 
Steele's  dissenting  opinion,  that  the  case  came 
"within  the  doctrine  .mnounced  in  the  People  vt. 
District  Court,  29  Colorado,  5,  where  the  right 
of  the  Distiict  Jud£^  to  appoint  a  special  officer 
to  advise  th>"  Grand  Jury  whenever  he  has 
reason  to  believe,  from  information  which  he  con- 
siders reliable,  that  crimes  have  been  cou  rn>*»ed 
and  that  the  office  rs'  conduct  in  conneoU'u!  th-n;- 
with  is  such  that  it  should  be  in. ;  ^igatcd.  is 
expressly  confirmed." 

The  franchise  investigation  was  ("n  i  iy  invijght 
before  me.  As  judge  of  the  Count.  (  oui-.,  i  '  ;  ■; 
the  right,  under  the  charter,  "to  hear  i\\\  <  i,i:i  a 
contests."  The  lawyers  for  the  corporations  filed 
affidavits  charging  me  with  prejudice  and  demand- 
ing a  change  of  venue.  I  refused  to  grant  it.  An 
appeal  was  taken  to  Judge  Malone  of  the  District 
Court,  and  the  corporation  lawyers  argued  there 
that  I  had  no  jurisdiction.  "Some  of  the  counsel 
for  the  petitioners,"  Judge  Malone  said  in  his 
decision,  "were  frank  enough  to  tell  the  Court 
that  they  did  not  think  there  was  any  court  that 
had  jurisdiction  to  consider,  investigate  or  pass 
upon  the  validity  of  the  franchises  m  question. 


244 


THE  BEAST 


or  as  to  whether  they  were  lawfully  carried.  They 
say  that  there  having  been  no  court  or  tribunal 
established  or  named  for  the  purpose,  there  is  a 
radical  defect  in  the  legislation  upon  the  subject, 
which  can  only  be  corrected  by  further  legislation. 
.  .  .  I  cannot  believe  this  to  be  true."  He 
resolved  the  doubt  in  the  case  in  favour  of  the 
people,  and  held  that  the  County  Court  had  the 
right  tu  hear  the  contest.  He  has  since  admitted 
that  he  had  been  warned  that  if  his  decision  went 
against  the  corporations  he  could  not  be  renom- 
inated to  the  bench;  and  he  has  not  been  renomi- 
nated! 

The  case  before  me  continued.  There  con- 
tinued also  a  fv>neral  exodus  from  Denver  that 
became  one  of  i; «. ..  jokes  of  the  newspapers.  "  Bill " 
Evans,  president  of  the  tramway  company,  had 
gone  East.  Frsuauff,  the  manager  of  the  gas 
company,  had  taken  an  early  train.  "Bill" 
Davoren,  chairman  of  the  Democratic  City  and 
County  Central  Committee  had  flown,  and  a 
friend  of  hb  came  to  my  chambers  to  ask  that  I 
grant  him  immunity  on  the  promise  that  the 
organization  would  back  me  as  a  candidate  for 
the  Governorship.  Scores  of  young  clerks  made 
off,  their  travelling  expenses  paid  (as  some  of  them 
have  since  confessed  to  me)  by  the  gas  company. 
The  mothsrs  of  others  —  or  their  wives  —  came 
to  my  chambers  with  pitiful  tales  of  poverty  and 
lack  of  employment,  and  told  me  that  their  sons 


A  CITY  PILLAGED  84« 

or  their  husbands  had  been  compelled  to  cast 
fraudulent  votes  or  lose  the  work  on  which  they 
depended  for  their  daily  bread.     (The  victims  of 
the  Beast!)    One  of  the  guilty  clerks  was  the 
son  of  the  Bishop  of  one  of  Denver's  churches,  and 
I  was  besought  for  the  sake  of  his  father,  for  the 
sake  of  the  congregation,  for  the  sake  of  religion 
and  public  decency,  not  to  put  him  on  the  witness 
stand.     (He  finally   escaped   the  process   server 
and  got  out  of  town.)    A  young  man  came  to  con- 
fess to  me  that  he  had  committed  perjury  in  Judge 
Johnson's  court,  believing  that  the  corporations 
would  "square  it";    "for,"  he  said,  "it's  been 
common  talk  that  the  corporations   control   the 
Supreme   Court   and   wouldn't   let   us   get    mto 
trouble."    All  day  m  my  chambers,   every   eve- 
ning in  my  home,  these  trembling  slaves  of  corpora- 
tion government  besieged  me  with  their  petitions 
for  clemency;    and  the  pitiful  guilt  and  moral 
degradation  of  it  all  made  life  a  nightmare.    These 
people  were  not  the  "lower  classes"  of  the  slums 
whom  you  are  accustomed  to  think  of  as  born  to 
shame  and  suffering.    They  were  not  the  work- 
mg  men  who  are  "cattle"  to  such  as  Freeman, 
and    in    his   opinion    "not  fit  to  govern   them- 
selves."   They  were  those  whom  you,  "gentle 
reader,"  are  accustomed  to  consider  as  good  as 
yourself.    And  yet  they  were  dragged  through 
the  mire  of  fraud  and  perjury  just  as  you  and 
your  children  and  your  wives  and  your  mothera 


I 


«4»  THE  BEAST 

will  be  dragged,  if  the  Beast  m  your  commu- 
nity ever  finds  the  need  to  drag  you.  Never 
doubt  it! 

The  case  continued.  Party  workers  were  put 
on  the  stand  and  admitted  that  they  had  received 
money  from  the  party  organizations  and  had 
voted  for  the  franchises.  The  clerks  and  their 
wives  who  had  voted  on  the  fraudulent  tax- 
receipts  either  refused  to  testify  lest  they  should 
incriminate  themselves,  or  perjured  themselves 
so  flagrantly  that  the  court  was  compelled  to 
warn  them.  Scene*  similar  to  those  that  I 
had  watched  in  Judge  Johnson's  court  were 
repeate<]  in  mine;  and  Henry  L.  Doherty,  and 
those  of  his  fellow-officials  who  had  not  suc- 
ceeded in  getting  out  of  town,  smiled  as  they 
listened. 

Then,  in  order  to  prove  that  the  money  paid  by 
the  political  organizations  to  their  workers  had  come 
from  the  corporations,  Doherty  was  ordered  to  the 
witness  stand.  He  refused  to  testify.  With  his 
arms  crossed,  backed  by  his  lawyers,  he  denied 
the  jurisdiction  of  the  court  and  silently  dared 
us  to  punish  him. 

I  pointed  out  to  him,  mildly,  that  the  question 
of  the  jurisdiction  of  the  court  was  one  to  be  set- 
tled by  appeal  from  the  judgment  of  the  court  in 
the  case;  that  no  citizen  had  the  right  to  interrupt 
court  proceedings  by  such  an  arbitrary  defiance 
as  his.    And  I  fined  him  $500  and  sentenced  him 


A  CITY  PILLAGED  247 

to  imprisonment  in  the  County  Jail  until  he  should 
decide  to  testify. 

I  passed  the  same  sentence  on  Mr.  Fred  Wil- 
liams, chairman  of  the  Republican  City  and 
County  Committee,  on  the  president  of  the 
*-lection  Commission,  and  on  Mr.  J.  Cooke  Jr 
who  followed  Doherty's  example.  They  reflected 
h.s  amured  smile.  He  was  not  only  president 
of  the  gas  company  in  Denver,  but  he  was  (or 
had  been)  president  of  gas  or  electric  companies 
m  Madison,  Wis.,  Lincoln,  Neb.,  Quebec 
Cwada.  Milwaukee,  Wi.s.,  Grand  Rapids.  Alich  ' 
bt.  Paul,  Minn.,  Binghamton.  N.  Y.,  San  Antonio' 
Tex.,  and  St.  Joseph.  Mo.  JiU-  crossed  his  arms 
on  his  importance  and  defied  the  law. 

I  summoned  the  Deputy  Sheriff  ("Ed"  G.  Shaf- 
fer) and  warned  him  that  the  court's  order  must 
be  obeyed,  that  Doherty  must  go  to  jail  and  that  if 
any  special  privileges  were  granted  to  him  or  the 
other  prisoners  I  would  punish  for  contempt  of 
court   any  officer   that   granted    such    privileges. 
Ihe  corporation  lawyers  interposed  with  a  request 
that  I  merely  leave  Doherty  in  the  custody  of  the 
sheriff  till  writs  could  be  obtained  to  free  him 
pendmg  an  appeal.     I  refused  the  request.     They 
asked,  then,  that  I  suspend  sentence  until  they 
could  get  up  the  record  of  the  case  on  which  the 
writs  had  to  be  obtained.     I  refu.sed  that  request 
also.  ^    If  any  poor  man  came  to  this  court,"  I 
said,'  and  refused  to  be  swom.no  such  privijen^s 


W 


MB 


THE  BEAST 


as  you  ask  for  would  be  granted  him.  I  have 
never  known  any  one  to  show  such  contempt 
for  a  court  as  this  man  has.  I  refuse  to  stop 
the  court  proceedings  so  thai  the  Clerk  of  the 
Court  may  write  up  the  record.  The  defendant 
will  get  strict  justice  from  this  court  and  no 
more." 

By  this  time  Doherty's  smile  was  more  defiant 
but  less  contemptuous.  He  went  out,  in  charge 
of  the  deputy,  with  the  expression  of  face  that  I 
have  seen  a  hundred  times  upon  the  incorrigible 
bad  boys  who  had  been  sentenced  in  the  Juve- 
nile Court.  He  went  to  jail;  and  he  and  his 
fellows  were  entered  on  the  warden's  books 
with  a  prisoner  who  was  held  on  a  charge  of 
muffder. 

There  —  judging  from  the  newspaper  pictures 
of  him  behind  the  bars  —  his  smile  rather  faded. 
The  county  jail  was  not  built  to  Tumish  million- 
aires with  luxury.  The  cells  are  clean  but  bare; 
the  bars  are  tastefully  painted  with  aluminum 
paint;  the  floors  are  made  of  iron  plate  filled  with 
rivets ;  the  beds  are  hammocks  that  are  not  slung 
until  nightfall;  when  the  prisoner  wishes  to  sit 
down,  he  sits  on  the  floor. 

Doherty  remained  there  while  the  court  record 
was  being  prepared.  The  Clerk  took  no  more 
time  than  usual  with  that  record  —  but  no  less. 
And  if  the  reports  that  came  to  me  are  to  be 
believed,  Mr.  Doherty  became  rather  angry,  a,s 


i  A  CITY  PILLAGED  249 

night  followed  day,  and  day  night,  and  no  writ 
arrived  to  free  him.  He  expressed  a  very  low 
opinion  of  his  lawyers.  He  was,  I  believe,  the  first 
and  only  trust  magnate  in  this  country  who 
ever  found  himself  in  such  a  pitiable  situation;  and 
his  indignation  was  natural.  He  remained  there 
dunng  three  days  and  two  nights,  before  a  new 
act  of  court  lawlessness  freed  him. 

The  Supreme  Court  was  on  its  vacation,  and 
a  single  judge  was  unable  to  stay  the  pro- 
ceedings of  a  lower  court.  The  only  action 
a  smgle  Supreme  Court  judge  could  take 
was  the  granting  of  a  writ  of  haljeas  corpus; 
and,  under  the  ruling  of  the  court  in  the  pre- 
vious case  in  Judge  Johnson's  court,  a  writ  of 
habeas  corpus  was  not  the  proper  remedy  in 
contempt  cases.  But  there  was  still  sitting  in 
the  District  Court  the  notorious  Judge  Peter  L. 
Palmer;  and  Judge  Palmer  issued  a  writ  of 
habeas  corpus  freeing  Doherty  and  his  associates 
on  the  ground  that  the  Sui)reme  Court  was  not 
in  session. 

Judge  Palmer  had  no  more  right  to  issue  such 
a  writ  than  one  of  the  gas  company's  office  boys. 
He  was  as  lawless,  in  doing  so,  as  Doherty  had 
been  in  refusing  to  testify.  I  immediately  ordered 
the  Sheriff  to  recapture  his  prisoners  and  return 
them  to  my  court.  But  they  had  fled.  "I  have 
searched  the  entire  city,"  the  Sheriff  reported,  "but 
I  can  find  none  of  tht-ra."    The  newspapers  found 


wo  THE  BEAST 

Doherty  m  Lincoln,  Nebraska,  safely  beyond  the 
jurisdiction  of  the  court.  The  others  remained 
in  hiding  until  the  Supreme  Court  met  and  decided 
substantially  that  though  my  court,  under  the 
charter,  had  been  granted  jurisdiction  in  all  cases 
of  contested  elections,  the  franchise  investigation 
was  not  such  a  case  and  the  legislature  had  not 
specifically  empowered  the  court  to  hear  franchise 
cases.* 

I  have  written  all  this  as  baldly  as  possible,  so 
as  to  have  the  facts  before  you  uncoloured  by  prej- 
udice. But  do  you  realize  what  these  facts  mean  .' 
Do  you  realize  that  the  citizens  of  Denver, 
robbed  of  millions  of  dollars  by  a  franchise  steal, 
found  themselves  in  1906  with  no  court  under 
heaven  to  which  they  could  appeal  for  redress  ?t 
Do  you  realize  that  the  robbers,  caught  in  the 
act,  were  able  to  laugh  at  their  victims  and  defy 
the  law  ?  Can  you  consider  what  an  example 
of  citizenship  was  set  for  those  young  men  and 
women  who  were  compelled  to  betray  their  city, 
to  perjure   themselves    on    an   oath   before  their 

•A  ridiculoiw  quo  wamnlo  suit  wu  lubsequenUf  pivaeculed  by  District 
Attorney  Slidger  (!)  before  Judge  Peter  L.  Fklmer  (!).  Do  I  need  to  ny 
that  the  result  of  tluit  suit  was  favorable  to  the  coiporations  ? 

tWe  bad  a  bill  introduced  in  the  Legislature  of  lOW  providing  that  the 
county  court  could  adjudicate  upon  franchise  election  contests.  The  bill 
was  defeated  by  the  corporation  reprcaenutives.  Now,  under  their  con- 
lenlions  —  already  sustained  in  part  by  the  decision  of  the  Si^mme  Court 
of  11)08.  in  the  cue  liefore  Judfje  Malone  —  a  corporation  thtf  has  obtained 
a  iianchise  by  whainer  bfibery,  corruption,  or  ballot  frauds,  cannot  have 
iU  right  to  that  fniiwhisf  Isgally  ooBtertnl  in  Cotondol 


« 


A  CITY  PILLAGED  261 

God,  and  to  see  Doherty  and  his  associates 
smile  upon  this  treason  and  this  perjury? 
Doherty  —  the  millionaire  president  of  a  score 
of  power  companies,  rich,  honoured,  admired! 
Freuauff,  the  manager  of  the  Denver  Gas  Com- 
pany,  ex-treasurer  of  the  Board  of  Deacons  of 
the  Central  Presbyterian  Church,  an  active  relig- 
ious worker,  a  most  "respectable"  man!  Wil- 
liams, chairman  of  a  great  party  committee, 
ex-superintendent  of  a  Sunday  School  in  the  Central 
Presbyterian  Church !  Who  may  not  be  the  victims 
of  the  Beast  in  your  city  when  such  men  as 
these  are  its  active  agents  in  onm? 

Nor  was  this  all.  Months  after  the  court 
investigations  ended,  Mr.  Freuauff  kw4  —  or  had 
stolen  from  him  —  -iome  page.s  of  the  memo- 
randum book  in  which  he  had  kept  an  account 
of  his  briberies.  Those  pages  were  published 
in  facsimile  in  Senator  Patterson's  paper,  the 
Denver  Times.  They  were  in  Freuauff's  hand- 
writing and  he  never  repudiated  them.  They 
showed  that  he  had  corrupted  tin-  political 
workers  of  both  parties  in  the  fraschise  elec- 
tions, that  he  had  bribed  candidates  of  both 
parties,  that  he  had  paid  Mayor  Speer  $4,500, 
had  spent  $3,551  on  newspapers,  had  given 
$550  in  church  contributions,  had  paid  Judge 
Gavin  $400,  the  president  of  the  Board  of 
Supervisors  $1,600,  the  State  Oil  Inspector 
$4,490,  the  Commissioner  of   Supplies  $300,   the 


•■•  THE  BEAST 

Oty  Clerk  *W)0.  "Len"  Rogers  $256,  Soetje, 
M  election  commLssioner,  $200,  Julius  Aichele, 
former  county  clerk,  $670  —  and,  b  short,  on 
the  evidence  ol  tlH>se  five  pages  of  memoranda, 
had  used  W.«»0  to  corrupt  the  guardians 
and  sentries  uid  officers  of  the  public,  so  that 
the  corpor«l<on  banditti  might  find  open  gates 
wkI  d^enceiess  citizens  when  they  came  to 
pillage. 

PMIage?  Rich  and  plenty!  No  free  town  of 
Ike  Middle  Ages,  sacked  by  the  robber  barons 
and  their  retainers,  ever  paid  such  a  ransom  or 
yielded  such  a  haul  of  loot.  The  income  of  the 
Denver  City  Tramway  Company  for  the  year  1908 
was  more  than  three  million  dollars.  If  the  com- 
pany paid  for  its  franchises  as  the  street  railway 
does  in  Toronto,  Canada  (a  city  not  much  larger 
than  Denver),  the  people  of  Denver  would  be  re- 
ceiving, in  concessions  on  fares  and  b  actual  cash 
paid  for  the  use  of  their  streets,  more  than  a  mil- 
lion dollars  a  year  insteau  of  a  beggarly  $60,000. 
(And  it  must  be  recalled  that  for  this  beggarly 
$60,000  the  company  has  had  its  car  taxes  of 
$10,000  remitted !)  If  the  citizens  of  Toronto  paid 
the  fares  that  the  citizens  of  Denver  do,  their  street 
car  travel  would  have  cost  them  $829,721  more 
in  1908  than  it  did. 

In  a  recent  case  in  the  Federal  Court  b  Denver 
City  Attorney  Harry  A.  Lbdsley  —  always  the 
friend  of  the  Beast  —  stipulated   away   to   Mr. 


-mi^ 


A  CITY  PILLAGED  «4S 

Charles   J.    Hughes,   attorney   for  the   tramway 
company,  valuable  rights  in  a  case  involving  the 
tramway  franchise,  so  that  the  Federal  Judge  on 
the  bench  was  compelled  to  concede  the  right  of 
the  tramway  to  a  fifty-year  franchise.*  leaving  stilJ 
undetermined    its  further  persistent  claim  to  a 
perpetual    franchise.     If   the    Denver   Tramway 
Company   can    continue   to   defend    that    illf-gal 
claim,  its  "rights"  in  the  streets  of  Denver  are 
worth   $500,000,000,    to   put    it   modestly.    The 
physical   value  of  the  tramway  plant  does  not 
exceed  $7,500,000.    Its  stocks  and  bonds  aggre- 
gate  about  $21,000,000;  an   additional   Lssue  of 
$25,000,000  of  bonds  has  recently   been   author- 
ized—of which  $13,000,000   is   to    retire    prior 
liens,  etc.  —  and  it  is  predicted  in  the  brokers' 
offices  that  an  old  issue  of  $6,000,000  of  stock 
will    be   increased    to    $20,000,000    as    .soon    as 
these  Hens  have  been    -etired.      Loot!     Beyond 
the    dreams    of    all    the    thieves,    highwaymen, 
pirates  and  gentlemen  of  fortune  in  the  hisfv  . , 
of  crime. 

The    Denver    Gas    and    Electric    Company    is 
earning  sufficient  to  pay  di^ridends  of  20  per  pcr» 
It  charges  $1.00  a  hundred  for  gas.    And  now 

"Our  new  Supreme  Court,  in  Deoonber  1909,  held  flaUy  agnin.,  thi, 
chum  in  "  the  Loulriile  lewer  oue." 

In  the  >ppesl  of  thi>  cue  now  pending  in  the  Federal  Court  of  Ap|M-.l. 
(Jan..  I»10)  the  ipecid  attorney  for  the  dly  is  Mr.  N.  Waller  Oiion.  who 
11  *bo  attomev  for  Mr.  Ey»n>.  prendeut  of  the  Uamway  company,  in 
pnyate  litigalian!  '^" 


254  THE  BEAST 

Doherty  and  Freuauff  have  announced  a  plan 
to  reorganize  with  a  bond  issue  of  $25,000,000 
and  "a  stock  reorganization  at  a  hiter  date." 
The  amount  of  the  stock  issue  de[>pnds,  in  the 
language  of  the  railroad,  upon  how  much  the 
traffic  will  bear. 

The  Denver  Union  Water  Company,  piping 
water  into  the  city  from  the  mountains,  from 
great  watersheds  and  water  rights  belonging  to  the 
people  —  and  conceded  to  the  company  without 
any  reservations  to  the  people  of  their  rights  — 
charges  three  times  as  much  for  its  service 
as  the  citizens  of  Boulder,  for  example,  pay  for 
theirs.  Surely,  as  the  frank  Mr.  Freeman,  said, 
"the  corporations  give  this  state  good  govern- 
ment." They  give  us  a  government  that  is  an 
outrage,  and  charge  for  it  a  price  that  is  a  robbery. 

It  is  a  robbery,  and  duly  declared  so  by  the 
Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States.  That  court, 
in  the  case  of  Wilcox  vs.  Consolidated  Gas  Com- 
pany (of  New  York  City),  decided  that  the  rates 
charged  by  a  public  utility  corporation  must  be 
suflScient  to  pay  a  reasonable  return  on  the  "prop- 
erty devoted  to  the  public  use"  —  not  on  the 
watered  stock,  not  on  the  probable  value  of  the 
franchise  and  the  "good  will"  of  the  business, 
but  on  the  valuation  of  the  physical  plant.  It 
decided  that  a  reasonable  return  in  New  York 
City  for  a  gas  plant  is  6  per  cent.  Under  this 
ruling  —  which  Ls  the  law  of  the  land  —  the  Den- 


A  CITY  PILLAGED  235 

yer  Gu  and  Electric  Company  should  be  charg- 
ing the  citizens  of  Denver  not  more  than  0  per 
cent,  on  the  actual  value  of  its  pl.ml  instead  of 
a  sum  that  has  yielded  over  20  per  cent,  on 
stocks.  The  Tramway  Company  should  be 
charging  not  more  than  0  per  cent,  on  $7,300,000, 
instead  of  seeking  to  extort  from  the  peo,>lc  a  suf- 
ficient sum  to  yield  interest  on  $40,000,000.  But 
of  what  avail  is  the  law  when  the  robbers  so  often 
control  the  officers  and  the  courts  that  should 
enforce  tue  law.  and  control  thcni  for  the  express 
purpose  of  preventing  its  enforcement?  Here  is 
the  secret  of  the  Beast,  its  first  cause  and  its  final 
reason  for  being.  It  rules  to  rob.  It  must  rule  in 
order  to  rob.  And  as  long  as  it  rules,  it  will 
continue  to  rob. 

Mayor  Speer.  on  the  night  More  his  last  elec- 
tion, officially  opened  an  electric  fountain  in  City 
Park.  A  crowd  of  fifteen  thousand  people  (of 
whom  the  tramway  company  had  taken  its  usual 
toll)  applauded  the  sky-high  spurt  of  water  glit- 
tering like  fireworks  in  the  glow  of  coloured  lights; 
and  on  all  sides,  when  the  first  shouts  of  delight 
had  subsided,  there  sounded  the  heartiest  praises 
of  Mayor  Speer  for  what  he  was  doing  for  Denver. 
He  was  reelected.  Some  day,  let  us  hope,  an 
electric  fountain  will  be  dedicated  in  City  Park 
to  the  memory  of  that  well-meaning  and  unfortu- 
nate County  Treasurer  who,  when  he  found  how 
his  office  had  been  corrupted  at  the  time  of  the 


I 


Midocorr  DESoiurKm  ibt  chakt 

(ANSI  and  ISO  lEST  CHABT  No.  2) 


M2S 
13.2 


|2J 


[|I2£ 
12.0 


1.8 


1.25 


^  APPLIED  ilVMGE     li 

^R  165]   East   Main   Street 

y-g  RoctiBlt«r,   Ntv    fori,         U609        USA 

-^  (716)   482  -  0500  -  PHc"e 

^S  (716)  _aa  -  5989  -  Fa« 


«««  THE  BEAST 

franchise  steal,  died  of  the  disgrace.    It  should 

bear  the    inscription:   "To  the   civic   official  of 

Denver   who   died   of   shame.    Erected   by   the 

others  who  have  only  blushed  themselves  into 

msensibility." 

As   the   philosopher   said:    "There   are   times 
when  one  laughs  that  he  may  not  weep!" 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE  BEAST,  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  GOVEENOBSHIP 

rpilE  investigation  of  the  franchise  vote  had 
X      had  one  hopeful  issue:  it  proved  that  the 
corporation  ballot-box  stuffers  were  afraid  of  the 
teeth  of  our  new  registration  law.     Behind  every 
vote  that  we  counted  there  was  a  voter  —  although 
It  was  evident  that  at  least  a  thousand  of  these  had 
been  "qualified"  by  fraud.     The  Supreme  Court 
writ  arrived  m  time  to  prevent  us  from  uivesti- 
gating  the  fraud;  and,  by  one  of  those  suspicious 
strokes  of  luck  that  seem  to  happen  only  to  the 
corporations,  our  very  proof  that  the  votes  were 
not   "phony"   by  wholesale,  only  redounded  m 
the  public  mind  to  the  greater  profit  of  the  Beast! 
The  Denver  Republican  celebrated  the  fact  that 
the    election   had   been   probably   "the   cleanest 
held  in  Denver  since  it  became  a  city."      And 
It  claimed  the  credit  for  itself  and  the  Republican 
party. 

Said  this  official  voice  of  the  Beast,  sweetly 
disguised:  "It  required  an  enormous  amount  of 
work  to  bring  about  this  condition.  It  is  a  thing 
with  which  parties  and  courts  grappled  for  years; 
It  became  necessary  even  to  bvoke  the  Legislature 

M7 


W8  THE  BEAST 

and  the  Supreme  Court  to  wrest  from  comipters 
of  the  ballot  the  fruits  of  illegal  victory." 

Do  not  let  your  smile  be  cynical.  "Hypocrisy 
is  the  tribute  that  vice  pays  to  virtue."  There  is 
still  hope  so  long  as  the  animal  must  wear  its 
sheep's  skin  —  so  !ong  as  it  recognizes  that  if  the 
people  knew  it  in  its  true  stripes  they  would 
promptly  cut  its  throat.  I  have  that  hope  yet; 
and  I  had  it  very  strongly  in  the  campaign  of 
exposure  in  which  we  were  engaged  throughout 
these  years.  It  seemed  to  me  only  necessary  for 
the  people  to  "see  the  cat"  b  order  to  set  them  on 
it;  and  I  continued,  with  all  the  power  of  my  lungs, 
to  "bawl  out"  the  corporations  and  recite  the  list 
of  their  crimes. 

The  corporations  replied  through  the  Board  of 
County  Commissioners  by  refusing  to  pay  an 
outside  judf,e  for  helping  me  in  my  court  and  by 
disallowing  bills  incurred  in  the  work  of  the  court 
by  probation  officers.  During  the  five  years  that 
I  had  been  in  charge  of  the  court,  we  had  done 
more  than  twice  as  much  work  as  any  two  courta 
in  the  history  of  the  state,  and  we  had  done  it  for 
less  than  half  the  usual  expense.  In  Indian- 
apolis, there  were  three  judges  and  three  courts 
doing  the  work  of  our  one  court  in  Denver.  The 
judge  and  the  clerks  in  our  court  had  more  than 
returned  their  salaries  to  the  county  in  fees  paid 
by  litigants.  Although  the  four  [district  judges 
together  had  less  work  to  do  than  I  had,  they  wer« 


raf *»«*•-  *i*MM*  ^  - 


THE  GOVERNORSmP  259 

continually  calling  in  outside  assistance  and  the 
County  Board  was  paying  for  it. 

I  appeared  several  times  before  the  Board  to 
ask  for  help,  and  I  usually  found  in  attendance, 
as  the  Board's  confidential  adviser,  Mr.  "Jim" 
Williams,  the  right-band  man  in  politics  of  "Bill" 
Evans  and  the  tramway  company.  I  was  even, 
on  one  occasion,  referred  to  Mr.  Williams,  by  the 
County  Attorney,  for  the  answer  to  my  plea  that 
I  should  have  help  with  my  court  work.  I  did 
not  get  the  help  —  avowedly  because  I  refused 
to  allow  the  Board  to  appoint  extra  officers,  whom 
I  did  not  need,  at  a  cost  of  about  six  thousand 
dollars  a  year  to  the  county. 

One  of  the  officers  of  the  Democratic  party  of 
the  City  Hall  came  to  me  and  said:  "You  ought 
to  go  and  see  Mr.  Field,  president  of  the  tele- 
phone company.  He's  willing  to  help  you  out." 
I  did  not  go,  but,  s  ,quently  I  accepted  an 
invitation  from  a  friendly  county  official  to  meet 
Mr.  Field  a*,  luncheon,  and  1  found  him  very 
suave  and  conciliatory,  despite  the  fact  that  I 
had  been  publicly  naming  him,  with  Evans  and 
Cheesmtin,  as  one  of  the  corporation  rulers 
of   Denver. 

Mr.  Field  is  a  desiccated,  small  man  who  came 
to  Colorado  as  a  "lunger"  and  here  regained  his 
health.  He  was  known  in  Denver,  then  (as  he 
is  now)  to  the  politicians  as  "the  brains  of  the 
System."    Before  I  was  talking  to  him  very  long 


260 


THE  BEAST 


I  guessed  that  he  had  been  deputed  to  "take  me 
in  hand,"  to  try  friendship  and  gentleness  whe.e 
force  and  enmity  had  failed. 

He  blamed  "Will,"  as  he  called  Evans,  for 
having  opposed  me  in  1904;  and  he  said  he 
remembered  well  the  conferences  between  Evans, 
Cheesman  and  himself  about  my  candidacy  for 
a  return  to  the  Cc  y  Court,  and  he  confessed 
that  they  had  played  "poor  politics"  in  oppos- 
ing me.  He  did  not  think,  however,  that  I  quite 
understood  the  gentle  Will — who  was  "really  a 
good  man"  and  wanted  to  help  me.  They  all 
wanted  to  help  me.  They  all  admired  the  work 
I  was  doing  in  the  Juvenile  Court.  But  they  all 
felt  I  was  mistaken  in  my  charges  against  the 
corporations. 

However,  he  concluded  by  agreeing  that  I 
ought  to  have  help  in  my  court  work  and  he 
promised  that  he  would  take  the  matter  up  "with 
Will"  on  the  following  Sunday,  when  he  and 
Evans  were  to  meet.  He  subsequently  sent  me 
a  check  for  $250  toward  the  expenses  of  the 
Juvenile  Improvement  Association.  Did  I  accept 
it  ?  I  certainly  did.  Why  ?  For  the  same  reason 
that  I  once  accepted  the  aid  of  a  woman  in  Den- 
ver who  conducted  a  disorderly  house. 

I  sent  for  that  poor  creature,  and  an  officer  of 
my  court  brought  her  to -my  chambers.  I  took 
her  by  the  hand,  looked  her  in  the  face,  and  said: 
"Madam,  1  want  to  thank  you  for  your  good 


:  i^*'*t:»:^*^y -^  ^ 


THE  GOVERNORSHIP  261 

deeds  and  I  want  to  tell  you  how  I  despise  your 
evil  ones.  I  accept  the  good  you  did.  but  I  shall 
not  shut  my  mouth  about  the  evils  of  your  busi- 
ness." She  Tas  a  procuress,  but  her  business 
was  no  worse  than  that  of  the  corporations.  She 
corrupted  young  girls;  they  corrupt  whole  com- 
munities. 

(A  secretary  of  Mr.  John  D.  Rockefeller  once 
wrote  me  from  New  York  to  ask  my  views  upon 
tamted  money."  I  replied  with  this  story  about 
the  procuress.  He  did  not  send  me  a  con- 
tribution, but  if  he  had  done  so.  I  should  have 
accepted  it.) 

I  did  not  receive  any  help  from  Mr.  Field,  but 
I  had  a  visit  from  Mr.  "Jim"  Williams  and  found 
him    very    friendly.     Mr.    Gerald    Hughes    also 
came  to  tell  me  how  mistaken  I  was  in  my  enmity 
to  Mr.  Evans  and  how  Evans  had  had  nothing 
whatever   to   do   with   my    "turndown"    by   the 
machine  in   1904.     (Gerald  Hughes  is  the   son 
of  Chas.   J.   Hughes,   Jr.     He  was  counsel   for 
Evans  and  the  tramway  company  in  the  franchise 
investigation;  and  when  his  father  became  United 
States  Senator  from  Colorado,  the  son  nominally 
succeeded  him  as  attorney  of  the  tramway  com- 
pany and  its  allies.)     They  were  all  very  pleas- 
ant, and  I  enjoyed  their  tacit  admission  that  they 
and  their  master,  the  gentle  "Will,"  controlled 
the  appomtmenfs  in  my  court  as  absolutely  as 
If  I  were  a  chief  clerk  in  one  of  the  tramway  offices. 


ii 


26S 


THE  BEAST 


But  I  made  no  promises;  I  accepted  their  ad- 
vances without  being  deceived  by  them;  and 
finally  I  was  informed  by  one  of  their  a^nts: 
"There's  nothing  doing.  They're  still  scared 
of  you  and  Will  isn't  going  to  tell  the  Board  to 
give  you  help  yet." 

The  fact  that  they  were  crippling  the  adminis- 
tration of  justice  in  the  community  hud  no  more 
weight  with  them  than  it  would  have  had  with 
any  band  of  criminals.  And  they  were  noi  moved 
by  the  consideration  that  they  were  hampering 
us  in  the  work  for  the  children  which  they  pro- 
fessed so  much  ^to  admire! 

I  tried  to  force  the  County  Board's  hand  by 
"grand-standing"  in  an  appeal  to  the  public 
through  my  annual  report,  published  in  the 
Denver  Post.  But  nothing  came  of  it.  I  accused 
two  of  the  County  Commissioners,  including  the 
chairman,  Mr.  William  Lawson,  of  committing 
the  "crime  of  cheap  graft  and  rejieated  perjury," 
but  even  that  did  not  move  them.  I  had  to  arrange 
to  become  personally  liable  for  the  salary  of  the 
judges  whom  I  called  in  to  help  me,  and  it  cost 
me  hundreds  of  dollars. 

I  relate  all  this  merely  to  show  "the  cat"  — 
and  as  a  warning  to  any  one  who  is  ambitious  to 
carry  the  banner  of  rciorm  in  his  own  state,  that 
there  are  "other  ways  of  killing  a  dog  besides 
choking  it  with  melted  butter."  J  was  almost 
dead  from  overwork.    I  realized  that  I  could  not 


THE  GOVERN^     Sinp  203 

go  on  as  I  had  been;  my  health  would  not  permit 
It.  And  then  I  was  galvanized  into  new  aetivity 
by  a  confidential  report  that  the  Powei  -,  at  the 
next  legislature,  were  going  to  divide  the  County 
Court  from  the  Juvenile  Court  and  "lose"  me 
in  the  shuffle."  That  meant  that  I  must  watch 
the  commg  elections  and  use  my  influence  for 
candidates  who  should  help  me  in  the  "deal." 

They  were  state  elections.  Governor  McDon- 
aid's  term  was  to  expire;  so  was  Judge  CJabbert's- 
and  a  United  States  Senator  was  to  be  elected 
as  well  as  a  new  legislature.  It  was  certain  that 
Alva  Adams,  who  had  been  defrauded  of  his 
election  as  Governor  in  1904,  would  again  be  the 
Democratic  candidate  on  a  "vindication"  plat- 
form;  and  it  was  common  talk  that  Simon  Gug- 
pnheim,  the  head  of  the  smelter  trust,  was  to 
have  the  support  of  the  corporations  for  the 
United  States  senatorship. 

As  far  back  as  1902,  my  name  had  been  used 
If  preelection  gossip  as  that  of  ,1  "dark-horse" 
candidate  for  the  governorship;  and  I  have  already 
related  how  the  corporation  Democrats  had  tried 
to  bribe  me,  on  more  than  one  occasion,  with  the 
promise  of  their  machine's  support  in  obtaining 
Ihe  office.  For  several  years  I  had  been  receiving, 
from  people  all  over  the  state,  enthusiastic  encour- 
agement  to  run  as  a  reform  Governor;  and  the 
newspapers  had  been  continually  prophesying  my 
candidacy  and  predicting  my  success.    All  this 


264  THE  BEAST 

was  very  flattering,  but  I  knew  —  probably  belter 
than  any  one  else  —  that  whatever  the  people 
might  wish,  the  corporations  were  united  against 
me;  and  the  corporations  ruled.  I  knew,  too, 
that  my  work  in  ths  Juvenile  Court  was  as  impor- 
tant as  anything  I  could  do  as  Governor,  and  I 
was  not  willing  to  give  up  my  court  until  I  had 
evolved  an  efficient  legal  procedure  to  promote  its 
purposes  and  had  firmly  established  it  by  law. 

In  the  early  s.  immer  of  1906  there  began  to 
come  to  uiy  desk  hundreds  of  clippings  from 
country  newspapers  and  letters  from  friends, 
acquaintances  and  strangers,  urging  me  to  be  a 
candidate  for  the  governorship  and  promising  to 
support  me.  The  men  with  whom  I  had  been 
working  for  the  reform  of  the  election  laws  saw 
an  opportunity  to  carry  our  laws  by  electing 
me  on  a  platform  embodying  them.  Mr.  Paui 
Thieman,  of  the  Post,  was  particularly  confident. 
And  finally,  in  order  lo  put  a  stop  to  plans  that  I 
considered  hopeless,  I  wrote  to  Mr.  Alva  Adams, 
privately,  and  u.ged  him  to  come  out  as  the 
Democratic  candidate,  so  that  I  might  be  relieved 
of  the  expectations  of  my  well-wisherc. 

I  have  made  many  mistakes  in  my  life,  but 
that  was  the  most  foolish.  I  had  been  fighting 
the  Adams  family  for  years,  and  I  should  have 
understood  that  there  is  no  enduring  virtue,  as 
Mark  Twain  says,  "in  the  good  end  of  a  bad 
banana."     Frank   Adams,    as   chairman    of   the 


THE  GOVERNORSHIP  265 

Denver  Police  Board,  had  been  the  acknowledged 
agent  o(  the  Bear*  'c  controlling  the  saloons, 
dives  I  J  disorderly  houses  for  political  purposes; 
and  Senator  "Billy"  Adams  had  always  been  the 
yrafty  leader  of  the  corporation  cgents  in  the 
Legislature.  Alva  Adams,  howevei,  had  seemed 
to  me  a  man  of  another  stripe;  he  was  ti  e  logical 
candidate,  I  thought,  of  the  Democratic  party; 
and,  in  any  case,  if  he  would  announce  his  inten- 
tion of  makmg  the  campaign,  it  would  leave  my 
friends  without  the  support  of  any  party  fur  my 
name. 

Alva  Adams  replied  that  he  would  "rather 
take  to  the  woods"  than  run  again.  I  wrote  a 
second  letter,  but  it  received  no  reply  — except 
a  newspaper  mterview  with  Adams  saying  that 
he  would  not  be  a  candidate.  His  son,  Alva 
Adams,  ji.,  came  to  my  court  and  told  Mr.  Ger- 
ald Hughes  and  a  number  of  politicians  that  his 
father  did  not  intend  to  run  and  was  favourable 
to  my  candidacy.  I  received  similar  assurances 
from  other  sources. 

This  left  me  in  greater  uncrtamty  than  ever. 
A  labour  leader  of  national  reputation,  passing 
through  Denver,  come  to  my  house  and  advised 
my  candidacy.  He  assured  me  that  the  labouring 
men  would  never  support  Adams;  he  was  equally 
sure  that  they  would  support  me.  The  whole 
sta  was  up  in  protest  against  the  rule  of  the 
corporations  and  their  use  of  the  Supreme  Court, 


8fl0  THE  BEAST 

and  the  hour  had  come  to  lead  a  reform  move- 
ment to  success.  lie  asked  me  what  newspaper 
support  I  could  count  on. 

I  told  him  Ihnt  Senator  Patterson's  papers  were 
calling  on  Adams  to  accept  the  Democratic 
nomination  on  a  "vindication"  issue,  but  that 
the  Denver  Post  seemed  favourable  to  me.  We 
went  to  see  Mr.  Paul  Thieman  together,  and 
Thieman  was  as  enthusiastic  as  ever.  I  began 
to  see  visions  and  dream  dreams  of  being  pble  at 
last  to  attack  the  Beast  with  a  united  public 
opinion  behind  nie  —  but  I  still  hesitated. 

A  few  days  later  the  Post  endorsed  me  editorially 
as  a  candidate  for  Governor,  and  there  was  a 
flurry  in  the  corporation  camp.  The  paper  was 
no  more  than  on  the  streets  before  Mr.  Field,  as 
Thieman  afterward  told  me,  made  a  frantic 
effort  to  have  the  edition  stopped  d  the  paper's 
support  reconsidered.  But  the  Post  had  just 
lost  in  a  fight  with  Evans  about  a  public  franchise 
deal,  and  the  proprietors  were  eager  for  revenge. 
Their  newspaper  rivalry  with  Senator  Patterson 
made  them  ambitious  to  defeat  him  as  leader  of 
the  reform  Democrats,  by  forcing  my  nomina- 
tion in  spite  of  him.  I  found  myself  in  the  storm- 
centre  of  a  small  political  cyclone.  An  inde- 
pendent body  of  Republicans  in  El  Paso,  Conejos 
and  other  counties  offered  me  their  support;  the 
independents  among  the  Democrats  seemed  all 
favourable;  it  bc^an  to  be  evident  that  if  I  could 


THE  GOVERNORSHIP  267 

gel  the  Democratic  nomination,   the  success  of 
our  whole  reform  movement  would  '<e  sure. 

And  then,  at  the  solicitation  of  Senator  Patter- 
son. Alva  Adams  came  to  Denver  and  signed  a 
written  pledge  —  published  in  'he  Patterson  news- 
papers—in which  Adams  declared  he  would 
accept  the  Democratic  nomination,  and  salved 
his  conscience  by  adding:  "Judge  Lindsey  Ims 
a  right  to  run  for  (     iremor  if  he  wishes." 

Have  you  ever  played  politics  with  the  Beast  ? 
It  IS  as  puzzling  as  the  "con"  man's  shell  game 
—  as  bewildering    as    a  masked    ball— a^  diz- 
zying as  a  kaleidoscopic  ballet  ■   .need  in  a  trans- 
formation   scene.     I  got  my     .it  clue  to  what 
was  going  on  when  one  of  Simon  Guggenheim's 
personal  friends  explained  to  me:      "I'wa-  out 
at  a  little  party  last  night  with  Simon  c       he 
told  me  I  could  say  to  you  that  if  you  wih  only 
keep  out  of  this  race  for  Governor  and  let  things 
progress  so  that  Adams  can   be  nominated,   he 
will  promise  you  anything  you  want  in  the  next 
Legislature.     He  says  he  can   guarantee   it.     He 
told  me  the  deal  is  all  shaped  up  with  Evans,  and 
Simon   is   to   name  enough   candidates   for   the 
Legislature  to  give  him  absolute  control.     And  by 
the  way,   he's  going  to  nominate  good  men  — 
men  of  good  standing  and  not  the  ordinary  cheap 
skates  that  usually  go  into  the  Colorado  Legisla- 
ture.    Of    course    they're    going    to    make    him 
United  States  Senator.     He  told  me  frankly  that 


268 


THE  BEAST 


he  thought  you  could  be  elected  Governor  if  you 
were  nominated,  and  he's  satisfied  that  Adams 
can't  be.  This  vindication  issue  is  all  rot.  They 
are  prepared  to  show  how  the  Democrats  have 
taken  the  money  and  accepted  the  help  of  the 
corporations  when  it  was  offered  them  and  how 
they  have  stolen  elections  the  same  as  the  Repub- 
licans."   And  so  forth. 

It  was  not  news  to  me  that  Guggenheim  was 
to  have  the  senatorship.  He  made  no  secret  of 
it  himself.  He  had  told  Mr.  John  W.  Springer 
that  he  intended  i  to  get  it,  even  if  it  cost  him  a 
million;  and  in  an  interview  with  Frederick  Law- 
rence, published  in  Ridgway's  Weekly,  after  the 
elections,  he  admitted  that  he  had  bought  his 
place. 

But  the  part  that  Alva  Adams  was  to  play  was 
matter  for  thought.  I  looked  up  his  record  as 
Governor  and  found  that  during  his  regime  the 
corporations  had  fared  better  than  they  had  under 
governors  who  were  acknowledged  corporation 
favourites.  I  recalled  a  conversation  I  had  had 
with  Field  in  which  he  said  he  had  been  one  of 
Alva  Adams's  best  friends  and  had  obtained 
money  for  Adams's  campaign  fund,  from  the 
corporations,  at  Adams's  request.  It  was,  there- 
fore, no  surprise  to  me  when  Adams,  in  the  Demo- 
cratic convention,  accepted,  as  the  chairman  of 
his  campaign,  Milton  Smith,  the  corporation 
agent  and  attorney  —  and  this  on  a  platform  that 


THE  GOVERNORSHIP  269 

denounced  the  corruption  of  the  Supreme  Court, 
demanded  the  initiative  and  referendum,  advo- 
cated the  direct  primary  law  and  the  election  of 
United  States  senators  by  the  vote  of  the  people 
and  denounced  the  rule  of  the  corporations 
with  all  the  eloquence  of  a  new  declaration 
of  independence! 

I  believed  that  Senator  Patterson  was  honestly 
deceived;  that  he  accepted  Milton  Smith  in  good 
faith.  His  paper.  The  Rocky  Mountain  News, 
has  since  said  editorially:  "If  anything  is  clear 
in  the  political  field  of  Colorado,  it  is  that  the 
Democracy  cannot  afford  to  have  Smith  in  charge 
of  its  affairs.  ...  So  long  as  he  is  at  the  head 
of  the  state  organization,  the  reform  promises  of 
the  Democratic  party  will  be  greeted  with  derisive 
jeers,  and  its  denunciation  of  political  corpora- 
tions will  be  a  subject  of  mirth."  This  fact  was 
as  evident  to  me  then  as  it  is  now.  It  was  as 
evident  to  the  independent  Democrats.  They 
advised  me  to  stay  in  the  fight  and  they  circulated 
the  petition  to  nominate  me.  They  argued  that 
Adams,  carrying  Milton  Smith,  was  hopelessly 
out  of  the  running  and  that  thousands  of  both 
parties  would  vote  for  me  and  a  legislative  ticket 
to  defeat  Guggenheim.  I  went  to  El  Paso  County 
to  help  the  independent  Republicans  fuse  with 
the  independent  Democrats  against  the  Guggen- 
heim outrage;  and  a  committee  was  appointed 
in  Denver  to  name  an  independent  county  and 


n 


270 


THE  BEAST 


legislative  ticket  that  was  to  be  subject  to  my 
approval. 

But  when  this  latter  ticket  was  named  I  found 
it  largely  composed  of  Speer  corporation  Demo- 
crats. Mr.  Fred.  G.  Bonfils,  one  of  the  pro- 
prietors of  the  Denver  Post,  (which  was  still 
supporting  me)  assured  me  that  Speer  and  his 
city  organization  would  aid  me  if  I  would  agree 
to  lend  my  name  to  this  ticket.  I  received  assur- 
ances of  the  same  character  from  Mr.  Speer 
himself.  Mr.  Solomon  Schwayder,  who  had  been 
m  the  law  office  of  Chas.  J.  Hughes,  came  to  my 
house  twice  and  urged  me  to  head  this  corpora- 
tion ticket,  promising  me  Hughes's  support,  on  the 
ground  that  Hughes  would  be  the  choice  of  my 
proposed  legislators  for  the  office  of  United  States 
Senator!  In  short,  the  corporations  being  sure  of 
Adams,  now  wished  to  make  sure  of  me  by  tying 
me  to  the  candidacy  of  a  lot  of  corporation  tools 
who  would  never  allow  us  to  obtain  a  reform  law. 

I  refused  to  lend  my  name  to  any  such  business, 
and  I  lost  thereby  the  support  of  the  Post  and 
the  Speer  Democrats.  I  had  already  lost  the 
Patterson  papers  and  the  Patterson  Democrats 
by  refusing  to  support  Adams  unless  he  repudi- 
ated his  corporation  chairman.  There  was  now 
no  longer  the  faintest  hope  that  I  could  be  elected 
Governor,  and  I  felt  rather  relieved,  but  I  still 
had  the  backing  of  some  independent  Republican 
organizations,   and   I   endorsed   the   Democratic 


THE  GOVERNORSHIP 


271 


legislative  candidates  in  the  El  Paso  and  Denver 
Districts  in  the  hope  that  we  might  defeat 
Guggenheim,  at  least,  by  putting  in  a  Demo- 
cratic legislature. 

Evans,  meanwhile,  had  been  casting  about  for 
a  gubernatorial  candidate  to  carry  the  corpora- 
tion flag  in  the  Republican  party.  Mr.  Philip 
Stewart,  of  Colorado  Springs,  had  accepted  the 
role  and  then  revolted,  after  his  nomination,  when 
he  found  that  he  was  to  carry  Judge  Gabbert 
on  his  ticket.  According  to  the  newspapers  of 
the  day  several  other  prominent  men  also  declined 
the  nomination.  The  situation  was  grave.  Open 
public  gambling  in  Denver  and  the  progress  of 
the  Anti-saloon  League  had  made  a  "moral  issue" 
that  threatened  the  hindquarters  of  the  Beast. 
Churches  and  religious  organizations  all  over  the 
state  were  entering  the  campaign.  It  was  neces- 
sary to  have  a  candidate  who  should  give  respec- 
tability to  corruption. 

Mr.  Evans  found  his  man  in  the  Reverend 
Henry  Augustus  Buchtel,  D.  D.,  L.L.  D.,  a  min- 
ister of  the  Methodist  Church,  who  was  Chan- 
cellor of  the  Denver  University!  And  after  a 
harmony  meeting  at  which  Mr.  Buchtel  accepted 
the  nomination,  he  invited  Mr.  Evans's  emissaries 
to  rise  with  him,  join  hands  and  sing  "Blest  Be 
the  Tie  That  Binds"! 

The  tie  that  binds  the  Beast  and  the  Church  ? 
Yes,   and   the  Beast  and   the   College!    During 


272 


THE  BEAST 


the  Peabody  campaign  (according  to  the  Rocky 
Mountain  News)  a  young  student  named  Reed  had 
been  practically  driven  from  the  Denver  University 
because  he  criticised  the  corporation  Governor. 
Later  a  university  professor  was  sent  to  Europe  to 
gather  data  which  was  used  in  the  campaign  against 
municipal  ownership  m  Denver;  and  the  professor 
was  "exposed  but  not  forced  into  retirement." 
Later  still,  Buchtel  reprimanded  a  student  named 
Stanley  Bell  for  volunteering  as  a  worker  in 
one  of  our  Juvenile  Court  campaigns.  Mr.  Evans 
was  president  of  the  Board  of  Trustees  of  the 
University,  and  the  Reverend  Henry  Augustus 
Buchtel  was  his  Chancellor. 

The  use  of  Buchtel  m  the  campaign  that  fol- 
lowed was  a  huge  success.  Everywhere  people 
said  to  me:  "Why,  the  Chancellor  will  never 
stand  for  the  sale  of  the  senatorship  to  Guggen- 
heim!" Or  the  "dear  chancellor"  will  never 
permit  this  or  that  xmdesirable  thing  in  politics.* 
But  Buchtel  had  already  admitted  to  a  ministerial 
friend  that  he  believed  Guggenheim  ought  to  be 
elected  —  though  he  said  nothing  of  it  from  the 
platform,  you  may  be  sure.  After  he  was  Governor, 
he  not  only  endorsed  Guggeheim  but  vigorously 
defended  the  Legislature  for  electing  Guggenheim, 
honoured  Evans  with  a  place  on  the  gubernatorial 

•At  that  time  I  did  not  believe  he  would,  wittingly.  We  were,  »nd  had 
been,  the  best  of  personal  friends.  It  was  not  until  later  that  I  learned  all 
the  facts  given  here.  B.  B.  L. 


THE  GOVERNORSHIP 


27S 


staff,  and  gave  a  public  dinner  to  the  corporation 
heads  who  had  most  profited  by  the  rule  of  the 
System  in  the  state.  They  reciprocated  by  send- 
ing the  Denver  University  handsome  donations; 
Evans  led  with  $10,000,  and  Guggenheim,  Hughes, 
and  others  followed  with  fat  checks. 

The  keeper  of  a  gambling  hell,  whom  I  sum- 
moned to  my  court  and  forced  to  make  restitution 
to  one  of  his  victims,  said  to  me:  "I  have  some 
respect  for  Mayor  Speer.  He  tells  these  preachers 
that  he  believes  in  our  policy  of  open  gambling. 
But  I  have  nothing  but  contempt  for  that  old  stiff 
up  in  the  State  House  who  talks  about  'the  word 
of  God,'  and  gets  his  nomination  from  a  boss  who 
protects  us,  and  gets  elected  on  money  that  we 
contributed  to  the  organization!"  It  is  one  of 
the  saddest  aspects  of  this  use  of  the  Church 
that  the  Beast  gains  respectability  thereby,  and 
the  Church  contempt. 

I  yield  to  no  man  in  my  admiration  for  what 
"the  church  element"  has  done  to  fight  the  saloon 
and  the  gambling  house  and  the  brothel,  in  Den- 
ver. It  was  these  good  Christian  people  who 
conquered  for  us  in  all  our  earlier  encounters 
with  the  "wine-room  gang"  and  the  political 
supporters  of  protected  vice.  It  was  they  who 
helped  the  women  and  children  to  save  the 
Juvenile  Court  when  the  attempt  was  made  to 
destroy  it.  They  are  the  hope  of  society  in  every 
fight  for  public  decency  and  moral  reform.    But 


274 


THE  BEAST 


i 


in  a  community  where  the  "cohesive  power  of 
public  plunder"  has  united  criminal  corporations 
with  criminal  politicians  and  the  criminal  poor, 
has  put  the  dive  into  alliance  with  the  dishonest 
public  official,  the  unjust  court  and  the  predatory 
millionaire  —  in  such  a  community  do  you  sup- 
pose that  the  churches  by  some  miracle  have 
escaped  clean  ?  I  know  that  they  have  not.  I  know 
that  the  agents  of  the  Bexst  have  even  dared 
to  enter  the  house  of  God  i,.elf  —  to  intimidate 
the  minister  —  to  cajole  and  deceive  the  con- 
gregation —  and  to  use  the  religious  organiza- 
tions of  a  Christian  community  to  increase  the 
vicious  power  of'  the  System  and  to  punish  its 
opponents.     And  I  shall  tell  how  I  know. 

I  am  well  aware  that  what  I  am  going  to  write 
will  be  quoted  out  of  its  context  by  the  agents  of 
the  System  and  used  by  its  newspapers  to  prove 
that  I  am  an  enemy  of  the  religion  in  which  I  have 
been  raised,  and  a  traitor  to  th?  churches  that 
have  again  and  again  saved  me  from  political 
destruction.  I  can  foresee,  from  my  experience 
in  the  past,  that  when  I  attack  the  Beast  where 
it  hides  behuid  the  Church  I  shall  be  accused  of 
attacking  the  Church  —  and  so  accused  by  the 
very  agents  of  the  Beast  that  I  am  attacking. 
But  I  hold  that  I  should  be  a  greater  enemy  of  re- 
ligion, a  more  cowardly  traitor  to  the  Church,  if  I 
were  to  keep  my  peace  about  these  enemies  within 
the  camp  of  righteousness,  these  traitors  who  are 


THE  GOVERNORSHIP 


275 


trying  to  betray  the  very  pulpit  to  corruption,  to 
pollute  the  altar  of  God  as  they  have  poliulcd 
the  court  of  justice,  and  to  use  the  churches  for 
the  same  purpose  that  they  have  used  the  dives. 
When  a  petition  was  recently  being  circulated 
to  renominate  me  as  Judge  of  the  Juvenile  Court, 
a  pastor  of  one  of  the  most  influential  churches 
in  Denver  refused  to  sign  the  petition  because 
I  had  "offended  so  many  business  men."  "I 
can't  come  out  publicly,"  he  said.  "I  like  Judge 
Lindsey.  I  think  he  is  right.  But  we  have  to 
build."  For  the  same  reason  a  Denver  prelate 
who  was  raising  money  to  build  a  new  church 
wrote  to  one  of  his  clergy,  who  was  making  plat- 
form speeches  on  behalf  of  the  Anti-saloon 
League,  and  on'.^red  him  to  be  silent.  The  Chris- 
tian Citizenship  Union  —  during  my  last  non- 
partisan and  non-political  campaign  for  the 
judgeship  —  endeavoured  to  obtain  the  use  of 
a  downtown  church  in  which  to  hold  an  afternoon 
meeting  in  support  of  my  candidacy,  at  which 
Father  O'Ryan,  Rabbi  Kauvar  and  a  number  of 
other  clergymen  were  to  speak;  no  such  church 
would  allow  them  to  hold  the  meeting  under  its 
roof.  During  this  campaign,  a  meeting  was  to 
be  held  in  a  downtown  Baptist  Church,  and 
permission  to  hold  the  meeting  was  revoked  when 
it  was  learned  that  I  was  to  speak ;  and  the  reason 
given  for  the  refusal  was  the  fact  I  was  going  to 
speak.    At  a  time  when  practically  every  labour 


S76 


THE  BEAST 


union  in  Denver  had  adopted  resolutions  endors- 
ing our  work,  a  member  of  the  Christian 
Citizenship  Union  went  before  an  association 
of  ministers  and  proposed  that  they,  too,  should 
endorse  me;  they  silently  declined  to  do  so.  The 
Citizenship  Union  had  printed  at  its  own  expense 
a  number  of  non-political  circulars  advocating 
my  reelection  on  non-partisan  grounds;  tne 
pastor  of  the  Trinity  Methodist  Church  refused 
to  allow  these  circulars  to  be  distributed  to  the 
congregation;  and  at  the  Central  Presbyterian 
Church  they  had  to  be  distributed  on  the  side- 
walk before  the  doors. 

The  young  men  of  the  Christian  Citizenship 
Union  were  members  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  But 
an  assistant  secretary  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  during 
this  same  non-political  campaign,  told  me  frankly 
that  I  could  not  be  allowed  to  speak  from  the 
platform  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  hall,  because,  he  said, 
"We  have  to  get  our  subscriptions  from  the 
business  men  to  run  the  Association."  And  — 
to  descend  to  an  incident  so  petty  that  it  can 
scarcely  be  believed  —  the  officers  of  the  Union 
had  been  asked  by  the  members  of  the  boy's 
department  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  to  give  them  a 
portrait  of  me  to  hang  in  their  meeting  room,  and 
they  were  informed  that  the  Association  refused  to 
allow  the  picture  to  be  hung.  Now,  I  had  been  at 
one  time  chairman  of  a  building  committee  of  the 
Association,  and  had  voluntarily  resigned  when  I 


THE  GOVERNORSHIP  277 

found  that  my  chairmanship  was  an  offence  to 
the  "interests"  and  hindered  the  work  of  raising 
money  for  the  association.  I  had  maintained 
my  friendly  relations  with  the  young  men  of  the 
Association;  and  I  do  so  still.  The  picture  was 
in  no  way  offensive.  The  photographer  had 
done  his  best  to  make  me  handsome  in  it.  If  it 
was  not  a  beautiful  work  of  art,  this  perhaps 
was  because,  as  Wii .itler  said,  the  sitter  was  not 
a  bewilderingly  beautiful  work  of  Nature.  But 
it  was  not  so  hideously  ugly  that  the  objectors 
could  not  endure  it.  I  shall  never  believe  that! 
Never!    The  Beast  is  not  so  sesthetic! 

These  young  men  of  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  who  are 
banded  together  as  the  Christian  Citizenship 
Union,  have  done  more  for  the  enforcement  of 
the  laws  and  the  maintenance  of  public  decency 
in  Denver  than  any  other  similar  body  of  young 
men  that  I  know  of,  in  any  city  in  the  United 
States.  I  could  say  nothing  too  much  in  the  way 
of  grateful  praise  of  them  or  of  the  Association 
that  gave  them  their  ideals.  But  what  I  wish  to 
say  is  that  even  they  found  the  influence  of  the 
Beast  above  them,  met  it  in  the  management 
of  the  churches  of  which  they  were  members, 
and  were  punished  by  it  in  the  houses  of  business 
in  which  they  worked  —  for  two  of  them  received 
their  "notices"  from  their  employers  because 
they  had  been  conspicuous  in  the  work  for  reform. 

At  a  session  of  the  Colorado  Legislature  in  the 


278 


THE  BEAST 


m 


spring  of  1009,  we  were  attempting  to  force  the 
passage  of  a  bill  limiting  the  hours  of  work  for 
women  in  laundries  to  eight  hours  a  day.  Revival 
meetings  were  then  being  held  by  "Gipsy"  Smith 
in  the  Auditorium,  and  a  resolution  had  been 
carried  at  one  of  his  meetings  endorsing  the 
work  of  the  Anti-saloon  League.  It  was  proposed, 
at  a  conference  of  the  men  and  women  interested 
in  the  laimdry  bill,  that  we  should  attempt  to  get 
a  similar  endorsement  of  our  work  to  protect  the 
unfortunate  slaves  of  the  laundry.  And  I  was 
astonished  to  find  that  every  one  at  the  con- 
ference recognised  the  uselessness  of  such  an 
attempt.  Why?  Well,  it  may  be  enlightening 
to  notice  —  for  example  —  that  the  Den^'er  Gas 
and  Electric  Company  had  mounted  upon  the 
roof  )f  its  office  builduig  a  huge  electric  sign 
advertising  the  revival  meetings,  and  did  not 
charge  any  rental  for  that  aid  to  evangelism! 

Mr.  Ray  Stannard  Baker,  writing  of  "The 
Godlessness  of  New  York,"  in  the  American 
Magazine,  has  pointed  out:  "The  churches 
.  .  .  are  still  dallying  with  symptoms:  offer- 
ing classes  and  gymnasiums  to  people  who  are 
underfed  and  underpaid,  who  live  in  miserable 
and  unsanitary  homes.  .  .  .  They  devote  tre- 
mendous energy  in  attempting  to  suppress  vaude- 
ville shows  while  hundreds  of  thousands  of  women 
and  children  in  New  York  are  being  degraded, 
body  and  .soul,  by   senseless  exploitation  —  too 


THE  GOVERNORSHIP  279 

much  work,  too  small  wages,  poor  homes,  no 
amusement.  They  help  the  poor  child  and  rive 
no  thought  to  the  cause,  -vhich  have  made  him 
poor.  They  have  no  vision  of  social  justice: 
they  have  no  message  for  the  common  people  " 

Is  this  the  fault  of  the  churches  or  of  the  powers 
that   ire  trymg  to  dominate  the  churches?     There 
are  mmisters  in  Denver— like  Father  VVm.  O'Rvan 
the  Rev.  A.  H.   Fish.  D.  H.   Fouse.  Frank  T. 
Bayley.   Frost   Craft.   Bayard  Craig  and  Rabbi 
Kauvar-who  have  not  only  recognized  that  I 
was  right  m  my  charge  that  the  corporations  were 
corrupting  our  politics  and  exploiting  our  defence- 
less poor,  but  have  dared  to  support  me  publicly 
m  those  charges.     And  I  know,  from  more  than 
one  of  these  men.  what  influences  were  brought 
to  bear  to  silence  him  and  what  authority  he  had 
to  defy  that  hj  might  continue  to  speak.     The 
mmisters  are  in  the  same  position  as  the  rest  of 
us.     They  are  allowed  to  do  what  they  can  — 
and  they  do  much  -to  palliate  the  hardships  of 
poverty  and  rescue  the  victims  of  economic  wrong- 
but  as  soon  as  they  propose  to  attack  the  causes' 
of  some  of  the  greatest  hardships  of  poverty  and 
attempt  to  alleviate  the  mjustices  of  corporate 
greed,  our  masters  speak.     As  long  as  the  min- 
isters  are  content  to  dip  the  water  out  of  a  tub 
mto  which  the  faucet  is  still  running,  they  are 
encouraged.     But  as  soon  as  they  attempt  to  turn 
off  the  faucet  —  to  cure  the  cause  i-      M  of  reliev- 


«80  THE  BEAST 

bg  the  result  —  the  strong  hand  of  the  System  is 
laid  upon  them.  How  can  the  churches  have 
any  "vision  of  social  justice"  and  any  "message 
for  the  common  people"  when  the  rulers  of  their 
congregations  exist  upon  active  social  injustice 
to  the  common  people  ?  We  must  be  free  of  the 
Beast  in  our  cong^gations  before  our  ministers 
can  be  free.  When  the  slave  holder  sat  in  the 
pew,  there  was  no  Abolitionist  in  the  pulpit. 
Where  the  Beast  is  deacon,  the  minister  is 
dumb! 


CHAPTER  XVI 


HUNTING   THE   BEABT 

DID  you  ever  hunt  the  sacred  monkey  among 
the  Hindoos  ?  Have  you  been  a  revolu- 
tionist in  Russia?  Or  were  you  an  Abolitionist 
near  the  Mason  and  Dixon  line  before  the  war  ? 
Well,  did  you  ever  make  an  anti-corporation 
campaign  in  a  corporation-ridden  community? 
It  is  an  experience  without  which  no  man's  public 
life  can  be  said  to  be  complete.  No  politician, 
till  he  has  tried  it,  con  truly  boast,  "I  have  lived!" 
My  memories  of  my  tour  of  Colorado  in  the 
autumn  of  1006  I  would  not  exchange  frr  a  copy 
of  the  best  novel  ever  written,  a  seat  for  the  most 
moving  drama  ever  staged. 

In  the  first  place,  having  repudiated  the  cor- 
poration candidates  of  both  parties,  I  was  free 
to  speak  the  truth  of  them  all.  Having  no 
expectations  of  being  made  Governor  myself, 
I  did  not  need  to  consider  how  my  words 
would  affect  my  own  candidacy.  Being  a  can- 
didate I  was  sure  of  a  hearing,  no  matter  what 
I  said  —  thanks  to  our  American  courtesy  in 
such  cases.  And  having  no  party  claque  to  sere- 
nade and  applaud  me,  I  could  speak  of  things  as 


'Ml 


im 


282 


THE  BEAST 


I  knew  them  to  "people  who  were  eager  to  see 
things  as  they  are. 

When  either  of  the  other  candidates  arrived 
in  a  town,  on  his  special  train  with  his  staff  of 
politicians,  he  was  received  at  the  station  by  a 
committee,  escorted  to  his  meeting  by  a  brass 
band,  and  introduced  —  with  all  the  praises  of  a 
hired  eloquence,  from  a  platform  crowded  with 
"prominent  citizens" — to  a  hall  half  filled  with 
apathetic  listeners  who  knew  the  whole  prcceeding 
was  a  lie.  When  I  arrived  in  the  town,  I  found 
at  that  same  railroad  station  a  few  curious  idlers 
who  stared  silently;  I  made  my  way  to  the  hall 
as  best  I  could.  I  found  my  platform  empty  even 
of  a  chairman,  and  in  most  cases  introduced  myself 
to  a  silent  audience  that  packed  the  hall  to  the  doors. 
But  when,  having  paid  my  respects  to  both  parties, 
I  proceeded  to  explain  how  both  were  the  tools 
and  agents  of  the  Beast,  we  did  not  miss  the 
absence  of  the  brass  band.  My  fellow-slaves 
recognized  the  small  voice  of  rebellion  and  greeted 
it  with  a  shout. 

The  "prominent"  citizen  would  whisper  to 
me  afterward:  "It's  a  shame  you  had  to  introduce 
yourself.  I'm  with  you,  but,  you  know,  I  can't 
come  out  openly.  They'd  simply  salivate  me." 
Personal  friends,  speaking  under  the  voice,  would 
congratulate  me  and  add:  "We  wanted  to  have 
you  down  to  dinner,  but  we  didn't  dare.  You 
know  how  things  are."    In  the  towns  where  there 


HUNTING  THE  BEAST  283 

was  an  independent  ticket  that  I  could  be  on, 
there  was  no  lack  of  reception  and  plal»orm 
backing.  And  down  at  Montrose,  in  the  fruit 
country,  where  the  independent  farmers  did  not 
depend  upon  the  corporations  for  their  bread  and 
butter,  the  platform  was  as  well  filled  as  the  body 
of  the  hall.  But  for  the  most  part  I  was  preach- 
ing a  proscribed  doctrine  in  a  country  where  no  one 

—  under  pain  of  a  corporation  interdict  and 
excommunication  —  dared  to  give  me  any  con- 
spicuous support. 

I  do  not  write  this  pessimistically;  for  I  knew, 
then,  that  the  people  were  with  me,  and  I  know, 
now,  that  not  a  word  of  what  I  said  was  lost. 
Many  thousands  voted  for  me,  even  though  they 
knew  their  votes  would  be  thrown  away.  And 
our  exposure  of  the  political  conditions  and  our 
explanation  of  their  cure  through  a  reform  of  the 
election  laws  —  however  clumsy,  however  feeble 

—  started  a  demand  for  reform  in  Colorado  that 
has  not  been  stilled  yet  and  cannot  be  stilled  ever, 
until  it  has  been  granted.  Therein  lies  the  virtue 
of  such  apparent  Quixotism.  That  is  the  eternal 
weakness  of  the  Beast.  It  can  only  rule  through 
fear.  Let  but  one  man  in  your  community  defy 
it,  and  the  revolt  of  thousands  has  begun.  The 
days  of  the  Beast  m  Colorado  are  numbered. 
It  is  masking  itself  now  m  one  disguise,  now  in 
another  —  this  year  as  one  party,  next  year  as 
another— but  the  people  have  seen  it;  they  are 


284  THE  BEAST 

beginning  to  track  it  down,  through  every  devious 
winding,  in  all  sorts  of  unsuspected  lairs.  It 
cannot  "fool  all  the  people  all  the  time."  We 
shall  get  it  yet. 

During  the  governorship  campaign  it  even 
stole  a  "Lindsey"  ticket  to  hide  its  stripes  in 
El  Paso  County,  and  put  up  for  election,  under 
my  name,  a  gang  of  corporation  candidates  who 
would  oppose  to  the  last  breath  the  passage  of  any 
of  the  reform  law."  that  I  was  advocating.  I 
appealed  to  the  court  in  Colorado  Springs,  and 
an  outside  judge,  named  Armour,  was  called  in 
to  hear  the  case.  .  < 

(It  is  an  old  trick  of  the  Beast  to  bring  a 
judge  from  one  county  to  decide  its  suits  in 
another.  By  this  means  an  outraged  public 
cannot  bring  its  anger  to  bear  upon  the  traitor 
to  its  interests!) 

Judge  Armour  at  first  expressed  some  sympathy 
with  our  indignation  at  the  theft  of  my  name,  but 
he  had  a  change  of  heart  over  night,  and  in  an 
outrageous  decision  he  finally  ruled  against  us. 
We  took  the  case  to  Denver,  to  the  Supreme  Court 
—  which,  under  the  statute  of  the  state,  has  the 
right  to  hear  such  election  cases,  at  its  discretion. 
The  Supreme  Court  decided  not  to  hear  it,  on 
the  ground  that  there  was  not  time  to  do  so  before 
the  elections.  Consequently,  we  had  to  change 
the  designation  of  our  ticket  in  El  Paso  County, 
but  we  had  no  time  to  explain  the  fraud  to  the 


HUNTING  THE  BEAST  285 

electorate,  and  we  lost  several  thousand  votes 
through  the  confusion  of  the  ballot  and  the  despaii 
of  our  supporters. 

Then  b  Denver,  where  we  threatened  the 
Guggenheim  "deal"  by  endorsing  a  reform  ticket 
of  Democratic  candidates  for  the  Legislature  — 
after  they  had  pledged  themselves  in  writing 
to  support  our  election  laws  —  another  trick  was 
played  on  us.  On  a  Saturday,  ten  days  before 
ek'tion  day,  our  nominations  were  taken  to  the 
office  of  the  Secretary  of  State  to  be  filed,  before 
five  o'clock  in  the  afternoon.  The  office,  always 
open  at  such  times  until  midnight,  was  found 
locked.  The  Secretary  of  State  was  not  at 
his  home.  We  heard  that  he  was  leaving  the 
city,  and  a  messenger  intercepted  him  with  the 
papers  at  the  railroad  station  and  forced  him  to 
accept  them.  That  was  ten  days  before  the 
elections,  and  the  law  required  that  the  papers 
should  be  filed  eight  days  before  election  day. 

The  Secretary  of  State  wrote  us  on  Monday 
that  since  his  office  h."  ^  not  been  reopened  until 
Monday,  the  eighth  i  ,/,  the  nominations  couid 
not  be  accepted.  We  obtained  a  mandamus  from 
Judge  Mullins  ordering  him  to  accept  them. 
Guggenheim's  campaign  manager  obtained  an 
order  from  Judge  Peter  L.  Palmer  to  the  contrary 
effect.  The  dispute  was  carried  to  the  Supreme 
Court  —  the  same  court  that  had  decided,  a  week 
previous,  that  it  was  too  late  to  hear  election  cases. 


n 


iSe  THE  BEAST 

And  the  Supreme  Court  justices  not  only  heard 
it,  but  — with  Justice  Steele  and  Gunter  dis- 
senting —  they  reversed  Judge  Mullins's  decision, 
and  ruled  that  our  nominations  had  not  been 
filed  in  time  and  could  not  be  printed  on  the  ballots. 

I  shall  never  forget  that  hearing.  It  was  held 
in  chambers,  informally.  The  seven  judges  sat 
around  a  table  at  their  ease,  in  a  private  room 
carpeted  and  quiet.  I  appealed  to  them  for  justice 
—  my  own  counsel  —  hoarse  with  the  fatigue  of  a 
campaign  that  had  worn  me  out.  I  was  so  weak 
that  for  the  first  and  only  time  in  my  life,  I  wept 
before  a  court.  Five  of  the  seven  listened  as  if  they 
had  been  the  Grand  Inquisition  and  I  a  heretic  who 
must  be  exterminated.  I  saw  their  decision  in  their 
faces,  and  the  blood  went  to  my  head .  I  turned  and 
hurried  out  of  the  room  lest  I  should  reach  across 
the  table  and  seize  one  of  those  men  by  the  throat. 

Fortunkitely  such  emotions  do  not  endure.  (If 
they  did,  life  for  some  of  us  in  Colorado  would  be  a 
poisoned  rage.)  Crippled  in  my  campaign  by  hav- 
ing my  name  stolen  from  me  in  El  Paso  County 
and  our  ticket  refused  in  Denver  —  continually 
recalled  from  the  platform  in  one  town  to  defend 
myself  before  the  courts  in  another  —  without  a 
campaign  fund  to  defray  even  legitimate  expenses, 
and  with  no  organization  except  m  the  few  places 
where  there  was  an  independent  movement  to 
aid  us  —  we  came  to  election  day  with  the  cer- 
tainty that  our  independent  fight  would  prove 


HUNTING  THE  BEAST  287 

itself  the  greatest  failure  in  the  history  of  the  state. 
We  had  no  watchers  at  the  polls  in  Denver.  One 
of  the  Democratic  watchers  in  a  polling  place 
near  the  Court  House,  after  the  elections, 
offered  to  take  his  oath  for  me  that,  of  83  votes 
cast  for  me  in  his  district,  40  were  counted  for 
Buchtel,  40  for  Adams,  and  3  for  myself!  But 
even  so,  on  the  face  of  the  returns,  we  polled  the 
largest  vote  ever  counted  in  the  state  for  an  inde- 
pendent candidate.  Had  we  been  able  to  elect  the 
representatives  from  the  El  Paso  and  Denver 
districts  —  whom  the  courts  had  prevented  us  from 
endorsing  —  the  defeat  of  Guggenheim  would  have 
been  certain,  and  the  object  of  our  campaign 
attained.  Buchtel  ran  nearly  ten  thousand  votes 
behicd  his  ticket,  and  Adams  only  two  thousand 
behind  his;  we  cut  into  Buchtel's  vote  almost  five 
times  as  much  as  into  Adams's. 

Buchtel  was  elected.  His  candidacy  proved  a 
successful  disguise  for  the  Guggenheim  "deal," 
and  the  "church  element"  was  used  as  well  as 
"the  dive  element."  A  corporation  legislature  was 
put  in  power.  It  only  remained  for  the  corpora- 
tions  to  deliver  the  United  States  senatorship  to 
Simon  Guggenheim  "for  value  received,"  and  to 
betray  the  nation  as  they  had  betrayed  the  state. 

Simon  Guggenheim  had  no  more  claim  to 
represent  Colorado  in  the  Senate  at  Washington 
than  John  D.  Rockefeller  has  —  or  Baron  Roths- 
child.    He  was  the  head  of  the  Smelter  Trust, 


288 


THF  BEAST 


and  he  had  been  financially  interested,  of  course, 
b  the  election  of  Peabody  in  1904,  and  the  defeat 
of  the  eight-hour  law  and  the  suppression  of  the 
eight-hour  strike.  These  things  entitled  him  to 
the  gratitude  of  the  corporations  only.  He  was 
unknown  to  the  people  of  Colorado.  He  had 
never  been  seen  by  them  except  in  a  picture.  He 
had  never  been  heard  by  them  except  in  a  news- 
paper interview.  He  had  not,  as  far  as  I  know, 
ever  spoken  or  written  a  word  publicly  on  pol- 
itics. "I  don't  know  much  about  the  political 
game,"  he  told  one  of  his  campaign  managers, 
"but  I  have  the  money.  I  know  that  game." 
He  does. 

During  this  contest,  a  young  man  whom  I 
kne-— ambitious  to  be  a  state  senator  — was 
summoned  to  the  tramway  company's  Majestic 
Building  and  was  promised  a  nomination  on 
condition  that  he  pledge  his  vote  for  Guggen- 
heim. He  refused,  and  he  was  not  nominated. 
Another,  of  similar  aspirations  but  less  strength, 
after  denouncing  the  proposed  sale  of  the 
senatorship  to  Guggenheim  (at  a  public  meet- 
ing of  young  reformers)  accepted  p  nomination 
from  the  Republicans,  and  explained  to  his  reform 
friends,  after  his  election,  that  he  had  to  sell  him- 
self in  order  to  "get  anywhere."  He  voted  for 
Guggenheim,  and  he  became  one  of  the  most 
efficient  tools  of  the  corporations  m  the  House. 
Doss  Evans  had  controlled  the  Republican  con- 


HUNTING  THE  BEAST 


S89 


ventions,  and  resolutions  had  been  passed  pro- 
viding that  all  members  of  the  Legislature  b  vqting 
for  candidates  for  the  United  States  senatorship 
should  be  bound  by  the  caucus  —  that  is  to  say, 
should  be  bound  by  the  corporuiions  to  vote  for 
Guggenheim.  Many  of  the  legislators,  thus 
sold  and  delivered,  did  not  get  money  for  the 
prostitution  of  their  manhood.  One  of  them, 
whom  I  knew,  was  an  insurance  agent,  and  he 
received  a  big  insurance  policy  from  which  his 
fees  were  large.  Another,  a  young  lawyer,  had  been 
paid  in  corporation  cases  to  prosecute  or  defend; 
he  had  received,  in  the  course  of  a  few  months,  thou- 
sands of  dollars  in  fees;  and  he  had  received  them 
through  the  boss  who  had  helped  to  buy 
Gardener.  This  same  young  lawyer  had  come 
to  me,  after  his  election,  like  a  man  who  had 
made  a  bargain  with  the  devil,  full  of  abhorrence 
for  the  betrayal  of  public  trust  that  was  now 
demanded  of  him.  I  counselled  him  rather  to 
resign  than  to  sell  himself.  He  had  not  the 
strength.  He  voted  for  Guggenheim,  and  he  is 
now  one  of  the  most  notorious  corporation  advo- 
cates in  the  Legislature.  Others  received  fees,  cor^ 
poration  business,  or  political  favours  and  rewards 
of  various  sorts.  The  corporation  Democrats  joined 
the  corporation  Republicans  in  supporting  Gug- 
genheim. (At  the  Democratic  Club  during  the 
election  campaign,  Mr.  Gerald  Hughes,  son 
of  Chas.  J.    Hughes,  attorney  for  the  tramway 


290 


THE  BEAST 


company,  had  made  a  speech  in  support  of  the 
Evans-Guggenheim  Republican  candidates;  and 
the  corporation  Democratic  machine  had  openly 
supported  that  ticket.)  Guggenheim  received  his 
senator-ihip.  ♦ 

Do  ycv.  3'jppose  that  he  is  the  only  member  of 
the  Senate  in  Washington  who  has  been  so  elec- 
ted ?  Do  you  suppose  that  senators,  so  elected, 
represent  any  one  in  the  councils  of  the  nation 
except  the  powers  that  put  them  there  ?  Whether 
these  men  be  called  Republicans  or  Democrats, 
do  you  think  their  votes  are  cast  for  any  law,  any 
tariff,  any  reform  that  will  hurt  "the  interests" 
whom  they  represent  ?  If  you  do,  you  do  not  know 
the  Bea  .  It  is  not  only  Denver  that  lies 
beneath  its  paw.  It  is  not  only  Colorado.  It  is 
this  whole  nation.  The  System  controls  the 
machinery  by  which  we  elect  our  national  repre- 
sentatives as  well  as  our  state  and  city  representa- 
tives. It  picks  the  same  sort  of  legislators  to  rule  in 
the  Capitol  at  Washington  that  it  picks  to  rule  in 
the  Capitol  at  Denver.  The  men  so  elected  give 
to  the  nation  the  same  sort  of  government  that  the' 
give  to  our  state.  And  our  Sght  in  Denver  is  noc 
a  fight  to  free  Denver  alone  —  nor  to  free  Colorado 
alone  —  but  to  help  free  the  whole  nation,  and  to 
reestablish  a  free  government  of  a  free  people  in  a 

*Only  two  Republidan  memben  of  the  Legislature  voted  against  6uggen> 
heim:  Hon.  Merle  V-ncent  in  the  House  and  Hon.  Morton  Alexander  in 
the  Senate.    Both  were  lefeated  for  renomination  at  the  next  electioi). 


HUNTING  THE  BEAST  291 

country  that  shall  be  free.  It  was  for  this  we 
fought  in  1906.  It  is  for  this  tliat  we  are  ficlitine 
still.  *■       *• 

Our  fight  in  1906  had  some  disastrous  results 
for  me.  We  offended  the  blindly  loyal  party  men 
among  the  Democrats  as  among  the  Republicans, 
and  I  lost  the  support  of  all  the  party  newspapers. 
Senator  Patterson's  organs  did  not  at  once  forgive 
my  campaign  against  Adams.  The  Denver 
Republican  treated  me  as  an  irreconcilable  enemy 
of  the  corporations.  And  the  Denver  Post,  having 
failed  to  tie  me  to  a  corporation  Democratic  ticket, 
turned  to  Bucbtel  and  Evans,  and  enlisted  under 
that  black  flag  which  it  has  served  and  fought  for, 
ever  since  — with  occasional  independent  forays 
after  loot  of  its  own ! 

This  is  not  as  small  a  matter  as  it  may  seem. 
It  has  been  my  experience  that  there  are  no  agents 
of  reform  as  powerful  in  our  American  communi- 
ties as  the  newspapers.  They  are  the  very  eyes 
of  the  people.  What  they  refuse  to  see,  it  is  almost 
impossible  to  discover  to  the  public.  What  they 
desire  to  see  wrongly,  it  is  almost  impossible  to  show 
in  its  true  face.  And  this  is  well  known  to  the 
Beast.  It  not  only  uses  the  editorial  pages:  it 
applies  its  influence  to  the  reports  of  the  news 
columns;  .'f  supplements  editorial  arguments  and 
abuse,  with  misrepresentations,  with  falsifications, 
and  with  downright  inventions  in  the  reporters' 
room. 


208  THE  BEAST 

For  example:  A  complaint  was  made  m  my 
court,  by  the  Humane  Society,  against  a  woman 
who  was  drunk  and  ill-treatmg  her  children.  A 
Deputy  Sheriff  arrested  her  and  put  her  b  the 
county  jail,  at  the  request  of  the  neighbours,  "  to 
sleep  off  her  drunk";  and  they  agreed  to  take  care 
of  the  children.  One  of  the  "interests"  news- 
papers, on  its  front  page,  headed  the  story  somethmg 
like  this : "  Juvenile  Judge  sends  poor  washerwoman 
to  jail,  while  six  childien  starve.  Kind-hearted 
neighbours  take  care  of  children  separated  from 
mother  who  languishes  b  jail."  The  reporte. 
who  wrote  the  story  came  to  my  chambers  and 
explained:  "Judge,  I'm  sorry  about  that  article, 
but  it  wasn't  my  fault.  The  city  editor  told  me 
I  had  to  find  somethbg  to  roast  you  about,  and  I 
sent  in  that  story  —  but  it  wasn't  so  bad  when  I 
finished  with  it.  A  lot  of  things  were  added, 
after  I  turned  it  in." 

Or  again:  An  Italian  labourer,  charged  with 
neglecting  his  wife  and  encouraging  his  children 
to  steal  from  the  railroad  tracks,  came  to  my 
court  drunk  and  used  such  vile  langi  ^ge  that  I 
sentenced  him  to  jail  for  thirty  days  for  contempt 
of  court.  I  suspended  twenty-nbe  days  of  the 
sentence  without  telling  him  so,  and  next  day  — 
which  was  Sunday  —  I  sent  an  order  for  his 
release,  had  him  brought  to  my  home  and  gave 
him  a  friendly  lecture.  He  apologized,  and  — 
after  the  fashion  of  hb  people  —  he  kissed  my 


HUNTING  THE  BEAST  29S 

hand  before  he  went  away,  promisbg  to  attend 
to  his  work  and  look  after  his  family.  (And  the 
court  officers  afterward  reported  that  he  kept 
his  promise.)  Some  days  later,  a  newspaper 
prmted  a  sensr.tional  account  of  how  I  had 
taken  a  poor  Italian  from  his  home  where  his 
family  was  starving,  and  sentenced  him  to 
thirty  days  solitary  confinement  in  the  county 
jail  because  his  children  had  picked  up  a  few 
crnts'  worth  of  coal  from  the  railroad  tracks. 
The  article  was  headed:  "A  .I-^ffreys  on  the 
Bench." 

Whenever  a  boy  who  had  been  put  on  probation 
in  my  court  was  arrested  for  a  second  offence,  the 
"kept"  newspapers  joined  in  an  attack  on  the 
probation  system,  accused  us  of  encouraging 
young  criminals,  and  advocated  the  abolition  of 
the  Juvenile  Court.  Such  an  attack  was  made 
on  us,  once,  because  two  of  our  boys  had  been 
rearrested ;  and  a  railroad  police  officer  (Mr.  E.  D. 
Hegg)  in  no  way  connected  with  our  court,  wrote  to 
me  that  these  boys  were  two  out  of  103  boys  who  had 
been  before  us  from  the  district,  and  the  101  others 
had  never  backslided.  Such  misrepresentations, 
repeated  and  repeated  for  years,  seriously  hurt 
our  work  for  the  children.  They  seriously  im- 
paired the  public  credit  of  our  court  —  and  that 
is  what  they  were  designed  to  do.  The  Beast 
was  preparing  to  "get"  me  at  last;  having  driven 
me  ba      upon  the  County  Court  with  no  political 


204 


THE  BEAST 


support  and  no  newspaper  to  defend  me,  it  waa 
trying  to  alienate  the  sympathies  of  the  independ- 
ent voters  so  that  when  my  next  election  should 
come  I  might  not  have  even  the  "sentiment"  of 
the  non-partisan  citizens  to  rely  on. 

My  term  would  expire  in  the  autuc<n  of  1908. 
But  in  the  spring  of  1008  the  city  elections  would 
have  to  be  held.  As  judge  of  the  County  Court 
1  would  have  power  to  hear  all  contests  arising 
from  those  elections;  and  in  order  to  get  me  off 
the  county  bench  the  Legislature  in  the  spring  of 
1907  took  up  the  "deal"  —  of  which  I  had  already 
been  warned  —  to  divide  the  Juvenile  from  the 
County  Court  by  legislative  enactment,  and  "lose" 
mo  in  the  division.  Having  failed  in  our  attempt 
to  elect  any  reformers  to  the  House,  I  was  left  to 
face  this  "deal"  without  a  friend  among  the 
legislators  to  defend  me. 

Mr.  Geo.  S.  Redd  was  the  man  depuied  to  take 
the  matter  in  hand.  He  was  a  cousin  of  George 
Stidger,  who  was  then  District  Attorney,  and  he 
had  been  Stidger's  law  partner.  He  was  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Methodist  Church,  had  been  put 
on  the  legislative  ticket  by  Evans,  and  had 
voted  for  Guggenheim.  But  he  was  not  the 
sort  of  man  that  you  might  suppose  from  these 
antecedents.  "Judge,"  he  said,  when  he  came 
to  talk  with  me  about  the  bill  to  divide  the  court, 
"I'm  friendly  to  you.  I  believe  in  your  work  and 
I  will  tell  you,  now,  that  while  I'm  to  introduce 


HUNTING  THE  BEAST  MS 

the  bill.  I'll  do  all  I  can  to  make  it  satisfactory 
to  you."    And  he  did. 

I  proceeded  to  draft  a  bill  that  would  be  satis- 
factory to  me.  District  Attorney  Stidger  drafted 
one  that  was  satisfactory  to  the  System.  I  gave 
the  Juvenile  Court  jurisdiction  in  all  cases  against 
minors  and  m  all  cases  m  which  the  protection 
of  minors  was  involved,  gave  the  probation  officers 
complete  police  powers  and  >.'ave  the  court  the 
right  to  arrest  and  punish  adults  guilty  of  con- 
tributing to  the  delinquency  of  minors.  Mr. 
Stidger  took  away  from  the  Juvenile  Court  officers 
the  power  to  file  petitions  in  children's  cases,  denied 
the  probation  officers  any  police  powers,  and 
made  the  Juvenile  Court  an  impotent  little  police 
court  for  children.  In  the  House,  Mr.  Wilbur 
F.  Cannon  (the  same  Cannon  who  murdered 
our  insurance  bill  so  many  years  before)  amended 
Stidger's  bill  so  as  to  give  the  County  Commis- 
sioners the  power  to  appomt  all  the  probation 
officers,  the  superintendent  of  the  Detention 
School  and  so  forth,  so  that,  even  though  I  remained 
judge,  the  court  officTs  would  belong  to  the  System. 
I  simply  served  notice  on  Mr.  Redd  that  I  would 
not  accept  the  judgeship  of  any  such  court,  that 
I  would  remain  in  charge  of  the  County  Court  — 
knowing  that  this  was  exactly  what  they  were 
dividmg  the  court  to   prevent. 

After  some  irritated  conferences,  they  agreed 
that  I  should  have  the  right  to  appoint  my  own 


296 


THE  BEAST 


I'ajMMli 


court  officers,  but  they  still  refused  to  allow  the 
probation  officers  police  powers  and  refused  the 
court  the  right  to  try  the  gamblers  and  dive 
keepers  who  debauched  girls  and  boys.  District 
Attorney  Stidger  was  very  frank  in  his  explanation 
of  why  I  could  not  have  this  power.  It  would 
hurt  the  System.  Pacing  up  and  down  his  office, 
with  the  door  shut,  he  spoke  for  the  Beast 
and  announced  the  ultimatum  of  the  Beast. 
I  was  to  be  given  a  court  in  which  I  might  try  the 
cases  presented  to  me  by  the  System,  but  I  was 
not  to  have  a  court  that  should  give  me  any  power 
to  interfere  with, the  System,  by  prosecuting  those 
agents  of  vice  who  were  protected  by  the  System. 

We  kept  up  these  quarrels  and  conferences 
until  within  a  few  days  of  the  close  of  the  legisla- 
tive session,  and  then  I  served  notice  again  that 
unless  I  were  given  a  Juvenile  Court  with  teeth. 
I  should  remain  on  the  county  bench.  Stidger 
and  my  old  law  partner.  Senator  Gardener, 
finally  compromised  by  accepting  an  amendment 
to  their  bill  —  an  amendment  providing  that  the 
Juvenile  Court  should  have  coordinate  juris- 
diction with  the  District  Court  m  all  criminal 
cases  in  which  minors  were  involved  and  against 
all  persons  who  violated  laws  for  the  protection 
of  minors.  Senator  Gardener  introduced  this 
amendment  in  the  Senate  ar.d  had  it  passed. 

This  was  all  very  well,  but  I  had  no  proof  that 
the  amendment  had  passed  the  Lower  House.    In 


HUNTING  THE  BEAST  297 

fact  the  Clerk's  rxord  showed  that  it  had  not 
passed  the  Lower  House.     I  do  not  wish,  here,  to 
charge  that  th  ■'■e  v,ao-  a  ronspiracy  to  betray  me 
—  although   o  le  of  tlie  newspapers  at  the  time 
freely  made  th  .?  i  liaixv.     But  I  had  been  warned 
that  there  was  a  plot  to  get  me  into  the  Juvenile 
Court  and  then  "pull  out  the  slats"  from  under 
me;  and  I  refused  to  accept  the  Court  unless  I 
had  proof  that  Gardener's  amendment  had  i)assed 
the    House    also  —  for,  without    that   proof,  the 
"slats"  would  be  loose.     I  got  the  proof.     I  was 
given  a  transcript  of  the  records,  signed  by  the 
Secretary  of  State,  the  Clerk  and  other  officials 
showing   that   the   Juvenile   Court   Bill  and   the 
amendment  thereto  had  passed  both  the  House 
and   the   Senate!     That   transcript   nailed   down 
"the  slats"  —  for  the  Supreme  Court  of  Colorado 
has  held  that  you  cannot  go  behind  the  legislative 
records  even  if  you  have  extrinsic  evidence  to  show 
that  they  are  wrong. 

I  accepted  the  judgeship  of  the  new  special 
Juvenile  Court  in  July,  1907,  with  all  the  powers  to 
protect  children  that  I  had  had  in  the  County  Court 
for  seven  years,  but  of  course  with  no  power  any 
longer  to  interfere  with  the  System  in  election  cases 
or  to  try  adults  for  any  offences  in  which  the  rights 
of  minors  were  not  involved.  We  have  succeeded 
in  getting  from  the  Legislature  laws  that  give  the 
Juvenile  Court  not  only  power  to  go  over  the 
heads  of  the  police  in  children's  cases  —  so  as  to 


S;V 


298 


THE  BEAST 


arrest  offenders  whom  the  System  may  wish  to 
protect  —  but  power  also  to  act  independently 
of  the  District  Attorney  in  children's  cases  and 
to  file  complaints  against  offenders  whom  the 
District  Attorney  might  wish  to  protect.  It  is 
true  the  Legislature  did  not  seem  to  know  it  was 
passing  such  a  law,  but  there  it  is !  There  are  ways 
of  getting  the  best  of  the  Beast  legitimately  and 
honourably  without  beating  the  tom-toms  of  public 
clamour.  When  the  newspapers  refused  to  help  us 
with  our  "grand-standing,"  we  found  a  way  to  do 
some  still-hunting  after  night,  horribly  disguised. 


CHAPTER  XVII 


A   VICTORY   AT   LAST 

T  COME,  now,  to  the  last  chapter  of  this  story 
-■■     of  the  Beast;     but    I    come    to    it,    in    the 
reminiscence  —  thank  heaven!  — with    a    lighter 
heart  than    ,ny  of  us  had  when  we  faced  it  in  the 
fact.    As  the  result  of  seven  years  of  almost  fran- 
tic agitation  for  legislative  reform,  we  had  gained 
—  an  efifective  registration  law!    Nothing  more! 
In  all  our  fights    to  obtain  an  honest  charter  for 
Denver,  to  prevent  dishonest  elections,  to  protect 
the  city  from  the  theft  of  its  franchises,  to  defend 
the  poor  frt         nloitation  and  to  check  the  corpo- 
rations in  tL    ,      )use  of  the  courts,  we  had  failed. 
We  had  founded,  it  is  true,  a  Juvenile  Court  with 
laws  that  protected  the  children  from  the  agents 
of  the  System;  but  we  had  gained  no  election  law 
that  would  protect  the  court  itself;   and  we  were 
continually  assured  by  the  agents  of  the  Beast 
that  they  would  "get"  that  court   yet.     Gover- 
nor Buchtel  had  gone  about  the  country,  in  the 
summer  of  1907.  on  a  Chautauqua  lecture  tour, 
heralding  himself  as  the  man  who  had  been  called 
upon  to  "guide  Colorado  from  the  verge  of  polit- 
ical anarchy,"  and  incidentally  defending  Gug- 

2Q» 


300 


THE  BEAST 


li' 


in.:   - 

I,: 


genheim  and  the  corporations  that  had  elected 
him.  The  Denver  Chamber  of  Commerce  had 
passed  a  resolution  declaring  me  an  enemy  of  the 
state,  because  a  false  news  despatch  reported  me 
as  saying,  in  a  public  lecture  in  the  East,  that 
Guggenheim  ought  to  be  hanged  if  we  hanged 
Orchard;  and  the  members  of  the  Chamber  passed 
their  resolution,  although  many  of  them  afterward 
admitted  to  me  that  they  thought  I  was  "right" 
in  my  attacks  on  the  corporations  and  their  Sena- 
tor. ("You  told  the  truth,'"  they  would  assure 
me,  privately,  "but,  you  know,  it  hurts  business 
to  tell  it  —  it  hurts  the  prosperity  of  the  state.") 
The  Denver  Post  followed  the  resolution  with  a 
demand  that  I  be  driven  from  town,  and  stirred 
up  all  possible  enmity  againsi  n.  asa"defamer" 
of  my  state.  In  the  city  elections  of  the  spring  of 
1908,  the  Anti-saloon  League  and  the  "church 
element"  tried  to  elect  a  mayoralty  candidate  in 
opposition  to  Mayor  Speer  and  the  "dive  ele- 
ment"; but  the  corporations,  represented  by 
Boss  Evans,  betrayed  the  League  while  pretend- 
ing to  support  it,  and  Speer  was  triumphantly 
reelected  by  the  Beast,  We  were  all  dis- 
couraged. I  knew  that  I  was  regarded  as  hope- 
lessly "discredited."  I  knew  that  the  men  whom 
I  had  fought  believed  that  the  pub!!<?  was  tired  of 
our  crusa('ing  —  for  there  is  nothing  more  weari- 
some to  a  Western  community  than  a  "professional 
kicker."    Men  would  come  tc  my  chambers  and 


l;*^ 


A  VICTORY  AT  LAST  301 

say:  "Ben,  what's  the  use?  You're  only  but- 
ing  your  head  into  a  stone  wall.  Why  don't  you 
settle  down  to  some  sort  of  peace  and  comfort? 
If  the  people  want  their  state  run  this  way,  let 
them  have  it." 

The  trouble  was  that  I  did  not  believe  the  people 
knew  how  their  state  was  run.  I  was  determined 
that  they  should  know,  if  I  could  tell  them.  And 
I  went  into  the  campaign  for  the  judgeship,  m  the 
autumn  of  1908  —  as  I  had  gone  into  that  for 
the  governorship  it  1906  —  with  the  single  and 
forlorn  purpose  of  making  it  a  "campaign  of 
education." 

It  was  probable  that  I  should  be  unable  to  get 
a  nomination  from  either  party,  and  we  had  first 
to  consider  the  possibility  of  making  an  inde- 
pendent campaign;  and  we  came  to  the  immediate 
conclusion  that  there  was  no  possibility  of  me 
succeeding  as  an  independent.  During  the  county 
elections  of  1906,  a  strong  organization  of  promi- 
nent citizens  had  nominated  a  number  of  inde- 
pendent candidates  for  the  judiciary,  m  an  attempt 
to  free  the  courts  from  the  influence  of  the  corpora- 
tion machine;  the  independent  ticket  had  been 
supported  by  a  large  campaign  fund  and  an 
eflBcient  organization;  the  candidates  were  men 
well  known  to  the  community  for  their  honesty 
and  public  spirit ;  yet  those  candidates  who  did  not 
also  get  a  nomination  on  a  party  ticket  received 
less  than  3,000   votes  out  of  about  60,000  cast. 


302 


THE  BEAST 


This  result  was  pointed  out  to  me,  by  the  men 
who  had  conducted  the  campaign,  when  I  con- 
sulted with  them  upon  my  own  candidacy.  They 
conceded  that  90  per  cent,  of  the  people  of 
Denver  wished  me  to  continue  in  charge  of  the 
Juvenile  Court,  but  they  believed  — as  I  did  — 
that  with  the  straight-ticket  ballot  to  vote  on,  not 
6  per  cent,  would  vote  for  me. 

You   see,  the  ballot  used  m  Colorado  is  par- 
ticularly designed  to  discourage  "scratching"  for 
it  dependent  candidates.     If,  for  instance,  I  were 
running  as  an  independent  for  a  district  judge- 
ship, and  a  Democrat  wished  to  vote  for  me,  he 
would  have  to  write  "Democratic"  in  the  blank 
space  at  the  top  of  his  ballot,  put  an  X  after  my 
name,  and  run  a  line  through  the  name  of  the 
opposing   candidate   on    the   Democratic   ticket. 
If  he  did  not  run  a  line  through  the  name  of  my 
Democratic  opponent  —  although  he  put  the  X 
after  my  name  —  his  vote  would  be  counted  for 
the  Democrat.     But  if  I  were  running  independent 
for  a  place  as  County  Judge  or  Juvenile  Judge, 
the  procedure  was  different.     In  that  case,  after 
writing  "Democratic"  at  the  top  of  his  ballot, 
he  would  have  to  put  his  X  after  my  name  and 
carefully  refrain  from  running  a  line  through  the 
name  of  my  Democratic  opponent.     If  he  did  run 
that  line  through  the  name  of  the-  Democrat,  it 
was  a  mutilation  of  the  ballot.    These  techni- 
calities are  always  made  more  confusmg  by  the 


men 


A  VICTORY  AT  LAST  303 

party  workers,  who  purposely  give  conflicting 
advice  to  the  voter  in  order  to  mislead  and  intimi- 
date him.  The  party  newspapers  play  upon  his 
fears  by  warning  him  that^if  he  tries  to  "scratch  ' 
he  will  surely  mutilate  his  ballot  and  lose  his  vote. 
And  the  party  men,  who  act  as  election  judges 
m  counting  the  votes  take  advantage  of  their 
opportunity  to  count  scratched  ballots  very  much 
as  they  please. 

"Judge,"  a  ward  politician  named  Billy  Amett 
said  to  me,  "unless  you  can  get  on  one  of  the 
straight  tickets,  it  doesn't  matter  if  all  the  people 
in  Denver  are  for  you;  you'll  have  no  more  chance 
than  a  snowball  in  hell.     The  people  don't  know 
how    to    scratch.     They're    scared    to    try    it 
And    they    won't    try    it;    they    know    indepen- 
dents have  no  chance  and  they  don't  want  to 
throw   away   their   votes."     My   friends   warned 
me  that  if  I  ran  independent,  I  would  be  giving 
the  corporation  machine  the  very  opportunity  it 
was  eager  for.     I  would  get  only  two  or  three 
thousand  votes,  and  the  word  would  go  out  from 
Denver  that  I  was  so  discredited  that  the  people 
of  Denver  had  refused  to  reelect  me. 

Well  then,  could  I  get  a  party  nomination? 
Ihat  was  the  next  question.  And  it  was  at  once 
evident  that  I  could  not  get  one  through  favour. 
My  mdependent  campaign  for  the  governorship 
had  piqued  the  leaders  of  both  parties.  Friends 
who  had  helped  me  in  the  Republican  convention 


t. 


11 


304 


THE  BEAST 


,.1  i» 


of  four  years  before  —  men  like  E.  P.  Costigan, 
J.  H.  Causey,  and  J.  C.  Starkweather  —  were 
now  marked  men,  "spotted"  by  the  Beast- 
they  could  not  even  get  credentials  to  a  conven- 
tion, much  less  raise  a  revolt  in  one.  Many 
well-meaning  men  and  women  who  had  fought 
for  me  in  1904  —  because  of  a  sentiment  of 
admiration  for  the  Juvenile  Court  —  had  since 
been  intimidated  by  the  opposition  of  "business" 
and  the  Beast.  I  was  no  longer  fighting  the 
petty  grafters;  I  had  raised  more  powerful  enemies; 
and  a  sentimental  following  of  kindly  disposed 
people  would  not  be  daring  enough,  I  knew,  to 
force  me  upon  an  unwilling  political  machine. 
There  was  one  hope  left.  One  of  these  two 
parties,  at  the  last  minute,  might  feel  the  need  of 
having  my  name  as  an  asset  to  a  corporation  ticket. 
I  was  not  willing  that  my  name  should  be  so  used, 
unless  I  could  make  it  plain  to  the  voters  that  I 
was  not  a  sympathetic  member  of  the  company 
in  which  I  was  to  be  put.  For  this  reason  I  pub- 
lished, in  August,  1908,  a  pamphlet  called  "The 
Rule  of  the  Plutocracy,"  in  which  I  tried  to  set 
forth,  in  a  brief  form  —  with  the  aid  of  Ellis 
Meredith,  an  experienced  writer  —  the  facts  which 
I  have  detailed  here  in  these  present  articles.  I 
issued  30,000  copies,  at  my  own  expense,  with 
the  money  I  had  earned  on  a  lecture  tour;  and  I 
had  thousands  of  copies  delivered  to  the  homes  of 
voters  in  Denver. 


A  VICTORY  AT  LAST  305 

A  month  later  the  conventions  met.    There  was 
a  fact.ona  f.ght  .n  the  Democratic  organization ;  and 
at  the  prehmmary  caucus  my  name  was  included  on 
he     sla  e.       But  before  the  convention  met.  Mr. 
Gerald  Hughes,  son   of   Charles  J.  Hughes,  the 
attorney   for    the   tramway   company,    interfered 
with    he  arj-angcment;  the  slate  was  altered;  and 
Earl  Hew.tt.  Hoss  Speer's  "man  Fri.lav."  nomi- 
natcl  as  Juvrn.le  Judge  a  police  magis'trate  who 
was  one  of  the  ward  politicians.     In  order  to  put 
the  machme  on  record,  I  proposed  to  one  or  two 
young  Democrats,  whom  I  had  l.cfrien,le<l,  that 
they  should  try  to  nominate  me  in  the  convention, 

he  r  political  rum,  and  I  did  not  press  them 
further.  My  name  was  not  mentioned  in  the 
eonvenfon.      To    several    delegates    who    made 

on    the   t  cket,    Mr.   Hughes   replied.    "Because 
Evanr"  ""'  ^"^""^^  ~ """  '•^*'  ^^'■ 

I  had  a  friend  in  the  Republican  caucus,  and 
he  said  It  would  be  good  policy  for  the  partv  to 
nommate  me;  out  the  caucus  did  not,  and  he 
admitted  that  it  was  because  the  politicians  were 
afraid  of  the  corporations.  They  nominated  a 
man  named  Howze,  who,  after  the  elections,  tried 
to  collect  a  fund  to  fight  some  of  our  laws  for  the 
protection  of  children,  on  the  ground  that  they 
were  unconstitutional!  ^ 


SM  THE  BEAST 

There  was  nothbg  for  us  now  but  an  inde- 
pendent campaign.  We  tried  to  raise  a  canipaign 
fund.  My  friends  went  first  among  the  business 
men  —  and  found  their  pockets  buttoned.  All 
our  efforts  ended  in  raising  only  $430.  The 
business  men  said  that  I  was  "the  man  for  the 
place,"  but  that  I  was  foolish  to  attack  the  cor- 
porations, and  that  it  was  dangerous  for  a  man  of 
business  to  support  me.  For  the  same  reason, 
many  of  them  refused  even  to  sign  a  petition  to 
nominate  me. 

I  then  tried  the  ministers.  I  sent  a  letter  to 
every  preacher  in  Denver  —  about  one  hundred 
and  fifty  in  all; — explaining  my  diflSculties  and 
asking  them  to  meet  ire  in  the  Juvenile  Court  on 
an  ap  o'nted  evening.  Four  or  five  sent  letters 
of  regret.  Two  or  three  came  to  the  meeting. 
The  others  were  silent.  Later  the  young  men 
of  the  Christian  Citizenship  Union  sent  a  sim- 
ilar letter  to  the  ministers,  through  their  presi- 
dent, Mr.  Harry  G.  Fisher.  The  same  ministers 
came! 

I  talked  to  a  number  of  school  teachers  ^ho 
came  to  my  chambers  privately  to  promise  me 
their  support.  They  told  me  that  many  teachers 
were  eager  to  help,  but  dared  not  make  them- 
selves conspicuous  because  it  was  known  that  the 
First  National  Bank  and  the  Moflat-Evans-Chees- 
man  interests  controlled  the  School  Board;  and 
the  teachers  were  afraid  of  losing  their  positions. 


:i; 


A  VICTORY  AT  LAST  sot 

I  tr?ed  the  leaden  of  the  Woman's  Club.     One 
able  ant»  wealthy  woman,  of  whose  support  I  was 
certam,  confessed  that  she  could  not  even  sign 
my  nommating  petition.     She  said   that   if  any 
woman  of  wealth  wished  to  take  part  in  such  a 
tight,  she  would   have  to   invest  her  money  in 
another    state.    Her    own    investments    were    in 
Denver,  and  if  she  were  to  champion  our  cause 
publicly,  the  corporations  would  make  her  suffer 
for  It  rumously.     Another  leader  told  me:     "You 
know.  Judge  Lindsey,  I  would  like  to  help  you 
but  my  husband  is  in  business,  and  his  business 
depends  large.'y  upon  the  good  will  of  Mr.  Evans 
He  has  large  contracts  with  the  county.     He  has 
to  d  me  that  I  must  not  under  any  conditions 
attend  your  meetings  or  do  anything  like  that. 
It  would  be  very  offensive  to  Mr.  Evans  and  the 
busmess  men."    Another  said:     "I  know  you're 
right,  Judge,  but  my  husband   is    in    the    City 
Hall.     Some   day   I   hope   he   will    be   free  -  so 
that  /  may  be  free  —  but  he  isn't  now."    I  wont 
at  the  beginning  of  the  campaign  to  practically  all 
the   women's    suffrage   leaders   who.  at   national 
meetmgs,  had  been  telling  how  much  the  women 
had  done  for  the  Juvenile  Court  in  Denver;    and 
none  of   them    dared    help    me.      Women    like 
Mrs.  Mary  C.  Bradford  and  Mrs.  Lafferty  (who 
was  a  member  of  the  last   Legislature)  took  the 
platform  against  me  and  supported    the  System 
m  Its  attempt  to  "get"  the  Juvenile  Court.     Mrs 


808  THE  BEAST 

Scott  Saxton  of  the  Woman's  Club  stood  practi- 
cally alone  in  her  open  public  support  of  our  anti- 
corporation  campaign. 

Beauty  and  the  Beast!  I  am,  and  have 
always  been,  an  enthusiastic  advocate  of  woman's 
suffrage.  In  our  Juvenile  Court  campaigns,  the 
women,  like  the  "church  element,"  have  giver  us  a 
loyal  and  victorious  support.  But  if  any  one 
believes  that  woman  suffrage  is  a  panacea  for  all  the 
evils  of  political  life,  he  does  not  know  what  those 
evils  are.  The  women  are  as  free  of  the  power  of 
the  Beast  as  the  men  are  —  and  no  freer. 
Their  clubs  in  Denver  have  not  dared  offend  it 
any  more  than  the  churches  have.  In  a  typical 
American  community  such  as  ours,  where  the  Beast 
rules,  the  women  are  as  helpless  as  the  rest  of  us. 
They  are  bound  by  the  same  bread-and-butter  con- 
siderations as  the  rest  of  us.  Their  leaders  in  politics 
are  politicians;  when  they  get  their  nominations 
from  the  corporation  machines,  they  do  the  work  of 
the  corporations,  and  there  is  almost  no  way,  under 
the  Beast,  to  get  a  party  nomination  except 
from  a  corporation  machine.  Women  in  poli- 
tics are  human  beings;  they  are  not  "ministering 
angels"  of  an  ethereal  ideality;  and  they  are 
unable  to  free  us,  because  they  are  not  free  them- 
selves. 

Do  not  misunderstand  me.  Woman  suffrage  is 
right.  It  is  just.  It  i«  expedient.  In  all  moral 
issues  the  woman  voteis  make  a  loyal  legion  that 


li   : 


A  VICTORY  AT  LAST  soo 

cannot  \h:  belrnyt-d  to  the  fonc.  of  evil;  „n,l  how- 
ever they  are  k-lruyed-a.  we  all  „re-  i„  .•aMm«iB„s 
against  the  Beast,  the  good  that  they  ,J„  in  an 
election  18    a  great  gain  to  a  community  and  a 
powerful  aid  to  reform.     I  Ujieve  that  when  tlu 
women  see  the  Beast,  they  will  In^thefirst  to  attack  it 
I  iH-heve  that  in  this  our  first  suecessful  camnai-.,, 
against  it,  the  women  save.l  us.     I  huve  on]  v  iritnj 
in  the  preceding  paragraphs,  to  answer  a  questi,,,; 
that  IS  in  the  mouths  of  many  Eastern  opponents 
of  woman  suffrage:    "Why  don't  the  women  cure 
the  political  corruption  in  Colorado?" 

Well,  we  had  gone  to  the  husine.ss  men.  to  the 
ministers,   to  the  teachers,  and  to  the  women's 
suffrage  leaders,  in  search  of  money  „r  an  organi- 
zation with  which  to  begin  our  fight;  and  we  had 
gotten  practically  nothing  but  confidential  good 
wishes.     The  corporation  newspapers       the  Den- 
ver  Rejnihlican  and  the  Denver  Post  —  were    of 
course,  against  us.     I  went  to  Senator  Patterson 
ar     asked  him  for  the  .support  of  his  papers,  the 
HMky  Mountain  News  and  the  Denver   Timi;- 
lu    r-  plied  that  he  would  support  me  if  I  coulcj 
get  on  a  party  ticket;  but  his   managers  seemed 
to  object  to  wasting  the  influence  of  the  papers  in 
a  hopeless  independent  struggle.     There  was  one 
other    daily,    the    "little"    Express,    a    Scripps 
paper    that    had    been    established    in    Denver 
by  Mr.  Scripps.  at  the  solicitation  of  members  of 
the  Honest  Election  League,   to  aid  in  the  fight 


310 


THE  BEAST 


I 


SS-  I 


for  the  people.  It  was  sold  for  a  cent  a  copy  — 
the  other  papers  sold  for  five  cents  —  and  it 
had  gradually  gained  a  circulation  among  the 
working  people  of  the  city.  It  had  refused 
the  free  telephone  service  offered  it  by  Mr.  Field 
of  the  telephone  company,  and  had  kept  itself 
clean  of  all  corporation  bribes  and  favours. 
Its  editor  was  an  incorruptibly  fearless  young 
man,  Mr.  B.  F.  Gurley,  who  had  had  experi- 
ence in  Cleveland  and  Los  Angeles.  He  knew 
the  Beast  and  understood  how  to  fight  it. 
When  I  sent  out  my  first  appeal  to  the  min- 
isters, asking  them  to  come  to  a  meeting  in  the 
Juvenile  Court,  Mr.  Gurley  gave  notice  of  the 
meeting  in  the  Express;  and  several  labour  leaders, 
whom  I  had  never  so  much  as  met  before,  came 
to  the  Court  and  volunteered  their  aid. 

That  —  though  I  did  not  know  it  then  —  was 
the  first  stir  of  the  popular  uprising  that  was  to 
come.  I  had  never  made  any  particular  appeal 
to  the  labouring  people,  but  they  are,  in  every 
community,  the  most  bruised  and  beaten  slaves 
of  the  conditions  that  I  was  fighting;  and  they 
knew  it! 

The  next  aid  that  came  seems  still  to  me  an 
accident  that  was  little  short  of  miraculous.  I 
was  talking  one  day  to  some  school  teachers,  in 
my  chambers,  about  the  impossibility  of  making 
a  successful  campaign  without  money  to  pay 
watchers  at  the  polls,  to  employ  workers  to  can- 


A  VICTORY  AT  LAST  311 

yass   the   wards,   to   print   election   "literature" 
instructing  the  voters  how  to  scratch,  and  to  sup- 
port an  organization  that  should  arrange  meetings 
and  direct  the  whole  campaign.    I  said  I  believed 
that  If  we  had  $5,000  for  these  purposes,  we  could 
wm.  I  believed  that  the  people  were  with    me 
but  my  experience  m  the  governorship  contest 
had  shown  me  that  where  we  had  a  little  money 
and  an  efficient  organization   we   could   carry  a 
county,  and  where  we  had  not.  we  failed.    And 
1  said  that  I  was  going  into  the  election  without 
money,  without  an  organization,  merely  to  make 
a    campaign  of  education"  agam. 

There  happened  to  be  listening  to  me  a  lady 
whom  I  had  met  only  a  short  time  before.    She 
had  first  heard  of  the  Juvenile  Court  through  Mr 
Lincoln   Steffens's  articles  in   McClure'a  Maqa- 
«»«>  and  she  had  later  heard  me  lecture  in  the 
*.ast.    She  had  become  interested  in  the  work  of 
the  court;  and  now,  after  leambg  of  our  need  of 
money  to  defend  the  court  b  an  election,  she 
went  to  one  of  the  court  officers  and  asked  whether 
she  might  be  allowed  to  contribute  $5,000  to  a 
campaign  fund.    She  was  not  a  wealthy  woman, 
but  she  and  her  husband -she  said -had  set 
aside  $5,000  to  be  devoted  to  philanthropic  work 
and  she  felt  that  to  use  the  money  in  defence  of 
our  court  would  be  philanthropic.    I  took  care 
first  that  she  should  learn  how  little  hope  there 
was  that  I  could  be  reelected;    I  gave   her   as 


312 


THE  BEAST 


i 


much  discouraging  political  information  as  1 
could;  and  then,  finding  her  still  eager  to  help 
us,  I  gladly  accepted  her  help.  She  has  never 
allowed  her  name  to  be  made  known.  She  has 
never  accepted  any  credit  for  her  act.  But  '^'ere 
is  not  a  shadow  of  doab*  in  my  mind  that  she 
saved  the  Juvenile  Court. 

We  began  to  organize  at  once.  Mr.  E.  V. 
Brake,  a  labour  leader,  took  charge.  He  got 
vohmteers  among  his  followers  to  act  as  ward 
workers  and  even  coaxed  many  away  from  the 
other  parties  to  join  with  us.  About  two  hundred 
women,  many  of  them  volunteers,  came  to  our 
headquarters,  took  instructions  on  how  to  teach 
the  voters  to  '''scratch,"  and  began  to  go  from 
house  to  house  repeating  the  lesson.  They 
reported  a  strong  sentiment  in  our  favour.  The 
politicians  of  both  parties  recognized  it  too,  and 
I  began  to  receive  the  usual  overtures  from  "lead- 
ers" who  were  willing  to  drop  a  dummy  candi- 
date in  order  to  get  my  name  on  the  party  ticket. 
It  was  a  presidential  campaign,  and  the  Repub- 
licans needed  all  the  support  they  could  get  against 
Bryan.  Mr.  Vivian,  the  Republican  State  Chair- 
man, held  conferences  with  his  committeemen  and 
ward  leaders,  and  advocated  my  nomination.  He 
was  opposed  by  the  corporation  attorneys  and 
particularly  by  Mr.  Field,  president  of  the  telephone 
company,  who  appeared  in  person  to  threaten  that 
if  I  were  put  on  the  Republican  ticket  he  would 


A  VICTORY  AT  LAST  3,3 

not  give  thecommittee  the  $8,000  promised  by 
the  company  to  the  Republican  campaign  fund 
H.  L.Doherty,  president  of  the  gas  company,  had 
sent  word  that  if  I  were  nominated  on  eifher'party 
ticket,  every  responsible  official  head  in  the  J 
company's  office  should   fall!     Mr.    Vivian    and 

^e  Central  Committee  were  eager,  now,  to  have 
me  on    he  ticket,  but  the  corporation  magnate^ 
with  their  hands  in  their  pockets,  blocked  t^Tay 
The  same  sort  of  thing  went  on  among  the 
Democrats,  and  reports  of  it  kept  coming  to  me 
day  by  day      Mr.  Field  was  the  active  head"? 
the  corporation  opposition  and  he  aid  not  dis- 
guise It.     When  Mr.  Gilson  Gardener,  the  Wash, 
ington     correspondent     of    the    Scripps    papers 
came  to  Denver,   Field    said   to   him  -  in  Ce 

IhI  k'""!^  T""^^"*  pronouncements  ever 
made  by  the  Beast:  "Our  company  is  in 
politics?  Yes.  Why?  By  virtue  of  necessity 
f^r  n^l^'r  contributes  to  political  parties  and 
for  political  purposes?  Yes.  Why?  Because 
this  IS  he  modern  system.  It  began  years  ago.  R 
exists  for  the  same  reason  that  we  contribute  to  a 
state  fa  r  or  a  Y  M  C  A      Tt  K«  "■""le  10  a 

l««„     •  "^•^*i-«-A.     It  became  the  custom, 

^!uTa      ?  !^P''*  'corporations  to  contribute 

Th!^  .  L  *''"'^"  ^"'^  '^"'^'ly-  't  -<»«  politics. 
Ihen  It  became  necessary.  There  came  the 
unfair  acts,  and  we  needed  men  in  office  who 
would  be  our  friends. 


S14 


THE  BEAST 


"Our  company  is  in  politics  in  order  to  have 
friends.  We  never  have  asked  for  anythbg 
improper.  I  speak  for  no  other  corporation  or 
person;  but  our  company  has  always  been  above 
reproach.  But  we  do  have  friends.  We  have 
them  in  both  parties.  They  come  to  me  and  ask 
advice.  They  come  and  ask  me  to  help  them 
lay  their  plans.  They  come  regardless  of  their 
parties  and  they  hold  meetings  m  my  office.  I 
am  not  a  boss.  I  have  carefully  avoided  being 
anything  like  that.  But  I  can't  help  it  if  they 
come  to  me  and  ask  advice." 

He  admitted  that  he  had  opposed  my  nomina- 
tion in  both  parties.  "  My  opposition,"  he  boasted, 
"  was  eifective. .  Yes,  it  was  effective  with  both 
parties.  Judge  Lindsey's  name  was  left  off  both 
tickets."  He  said  he  had  opposed  me  because 
I  had  made  attacks  on  his  "personal  character," 
but  that  statement  deceived  no  one.  I  had  never 
attacked  him  except  as  one  of  the  corporation 
presidents  who  were  debauching  politics  .ind 
maintainmg  the  political  system  that  united  the 
law-breaking  "dives,"  gambling  hells  and  broth- 
els with  the  law-breaking  public-utility  com- 
panies and  their  corrupted  courts.  He  deceived 
no  one  — least  of  all  his  interviewer,  Gilson 
Gardener,  who  wrote,  in  the  Express:  "Judge 
Lindsey  has  been  left  off  two  strong  party  tickets 
in  defiance  of  the  voters'  will  and  in  pure  revenge, 
for    the    truth    which    he   has    told.     It   is    the 


A  VICTORY  AT  LAST 


315 


work  of  the  corporation  powers— the  tramway- 
telephone-water-gas  combbation,  manipulated  by 
such  men  as  Field  and  Evans." 

He  certainly  did  not  deceive  the  labour  men. 
I  was  admitted  to  the  meetings  of  their  unions 
and  addressed  them  night  after  night.  In  com- 
pany with  Rev.  A.  H.  Fish,  of  the  Central  Pres- 
byterian Church,  and  Mr.  L.  M.  French,  a  labour 
leader,  I  went  to  the  factories  and  shops  at  lunch- 
eon hour,  talking  to  the  men  and  women  workers. 
We  made  it  plain  that  our  fight  was  against  the 
tyranny  of  the  corporations.  The  unions  passed 
resolutions  endorsmg  our  w  ork,  and  the  members  of 
the  barbers'  union  made  every  barber  shop  in  Den- 
ver a  centre  of  propaganda  which  their  lathered 
customers  could  not  escape.  We  sent  out,  from  our 
headquarters,  cards  to  the  voters  for  them  to  sign, 
pledging  their  votes;  and  we  received  23,000  of 
these  pledges  signed. 

The  women  —  not  so  much  their  suffrage  leaders 
or  their  politicians,  as  the  mothers  in  the  homes  and 
the  working  women  in  the  factories  and  the  shops 
—came  out  for  us  by  the  thousands.  Our  head- 
quarters swarmed  with  newsboys  and  school- 
children anxious  to  help;  and  some  of  those  boys 
made  the  most  effective  campaign  orators  we  had. 
It  was  tickling  to  the  verge  of  tears  to  hear  them, 
on  a  public  platform,  addressing  a  crowded  hall 
with  their  pathetic  earnestness  and  their  childish 
arguments.     If  the  "kids"  were  going  to  "stay 


316  THE  BEAST 

wif"    me,    they   pleaded,   why   shouldn't    "Ihi 
folks" ?    One  of  these  boys  spoke  to  an  audienc, 
of  several  thousand  at  a  W.  C.  T.  U.  conventioi 
in  the  Auditorium,  and  raised  a  heart-shakinj 
enthusiasm;  and  the  aid  and  inspiration  given  U! 
by    these    noble    women     was  a    power    in    th< 
campaign.     The  corporation   newspapers  cut  a.\ 
mention  of  it  from  their  reports  of  the  meetings  - 
maintaining  a  policy  of  concerted  silence  aboul 
my   candidacy   in    an    attempt    to   "bottle"   us. 
But   the   Denver  Express  kept   on   hammering; 
the  signed  pledges  kept  coming  in;    and  at  last 
Senator  Patterson's  two  papers  swung  into  line 
and  things  began  to  move  with  a  whoop.     The 
Christian    Citizenship    Union    had   succeeded    in 
reaching  the  "church  element"  in  spite  of  the 
opposition    of    those    wealthy    churches    whose 
boards    were    controlled    by    the    Beast.     The 
labouring  men  and  their  wives  packed  our  meet- 
ings.    In   the   foreign   quarters,  and  particularly 
on  the  West  Side  among  the  Russian  Jews,  the 
poor  mothers  whose  children   I  had   befriended 
received  us  with  tears  running  down  their  cheeks, 
so  that  I  could  hardly  speak  to  them  for  the  choke 
m   my   throat.    The  people   were  up  — with   a 
shout  —  with  a  shout  that  was  at  once  angry  and 
tearful  with  anger,  for  we  did  not  yet  believe  we 
could  win  —  and  the  politicians  shut  their  ears 
to  it,  and  orated  about  their  presidential  candi- 
dates,  and  placarded   the  town   with   "Rebuke 


A  VICTORY  AT  LAST  317 

Guggenheim— write  Bryan  on  your  ballot."  so 
IS  to  insure  the  election  of  Chas.  J.  Hughes  Jr 
attorney  for  the  tramway  company,  as  another 
corporation  senator  to  join  Guggenheim  in 
Washington!  And  the  machine  that  called  for  a 
rebuke  of  Guggenheim  was  the  machine  that 
had  elected  Guggenheim!  And  the  Hughes  who 
was  now  to  be  elected,  on  that  "rebuke."  was  the 
Hughes  who.  for  years,  in  the  courts,  had  fought 
for  the  corporations  against  the  people  who  were 
to  administer  the  "  rebuke  " !  These  are  the  tricks 
of  the  Beast! 

As    upon    former   occasions,   when   the   Beast 
m  Denver  was  in  trouble.  Mr.  Bryan  was  sum- 
moned to  act  as  the  eloquent  -  but.  I  am  sure 
unconscious -"tout"    and     "capper"    of     the 
System's   confidence  game.    In    1902,   with   the 
graftmg  County  Commissioners  on  his  platform 
he  appealed  to  the  people  to  vote  the  Democratic 
ticket,  and  the  grafters  applauded  him  with  all 
the   enthusiasm    of   guilt.     Now,    m    1908.    with 
Chas.  J.  Hughes.  Jr..  as  the  candidate  of  the  local 
utility  corporations,   on   a  reform  platform   that 
has   since   proved    to    be    the   usual    corporation 
fake      Mr.  Bryan  called  to  the  people  to  sup- 
port Mr.  Hughes,  and  used  every  eloquence  of 
his  oratory,  unwittingly,  to  "stall"  the  voters  into 
the   corporation    "deal."     Great    is    the    Beast; 
and    Bryan- even    Bryan    sometimes  — is    its 
prophet! 


SIS 


THE  BEAST 


Our  campaign  went  on  gaily,  nevertheless.  It 
was  a  straight  campaign  against  corporation 
ruic.  I  made  no  appeals  to  sentiment ;  I  often  left 
the  question  of  our  court  work  out  of  my  speeches. 
I  was  determined  that  if  I  was  to  be  beaten,  I 
must  be  beaten  as  the  opponent  of  the  Beast; 
and  that  if  I  was  to  be  saved,  it  must  be  by  voters 
who  saw  who  were  their  masters  and  revolted 
against  them.  All  the  usual  tricks  of  the  Beast 
were  used  against  us.  Many  Democratic  and 
Republican  "workers,"  in  going  their  rounds, 
whenever  they  were  asked  by  a  voter  how  to  vote 
for  me,  replied:  "Oh,  that's  all  right.  He's 
on  our  ticket.  Just  vote  it  straight."  And  our 
workers  were  kept  busy  explaining  that  I  was  on 
neither  party  ticket.  In  order  to  issue  instructions 
to  voters,  we  asked  the  clerks  in  the  office  of  the 
County  Cjerk  and  Recorder  where  my  name  would 
appear  on  the  official  ballot;  they  replied:  "In 
the  fourth  column  about  half  way  down."  Accord- 
ingly, m  our  printed  directions,  we  told  the  voters 
to  look  for  my  name  "in  the  fourth  column,  half 
way  down."  But  when  the  official  ballot  was 
issued,  there  appeared,  half  way  down  the  fourth 
column:  "For  County  Judge  for  short  term, 
to  succeed  Ben.  B.  Lindsey,"  with  the  "Ben.  B. 
Lindsey"  in  very  large  letters  where  it  should  not 
have  appeared  at  all.  Some  distance  below,  in 
smaller  type,  my  name  appeared  as  an  independ- 
ent candidate  for  Juvenile  Judge;  and  as  a  result 


A  VICTORY  AT  LAST  319 

of  this  trick,  it  was  estimated,  some  eight  thousand 
votes  intended  for  me  were  lost.     In  an  ordinary 
election,  it  would  have  been  sufficient  to  defeat  m". 
But  this  was  not  an  ordinary  election,  as  the 
vote  showed.     When  the  polls  opened,  the  betting 
was  four  to  one  that  I  would  not  get  ten  thou- 
sand votes.     Early  in  the  forenoon,  it  was  known 
that  at  every  polling  place  in  Denver  the  people 
were     scratching"  as  they  had  never  "scratched" 
before.     Women   wearing   long   white   badges - 
Vote     for     Judge     Lindsey"  -  watched     the 
approaches  to  the  polling  places  all  day  long 
without  relief,  and  accosted  every  voter.     A  news- 
boy, on  the  previous  night,  had  obtained  a  dollar 
from  our  committee  for  "campaign  expenses," 
had  bought  a  dollar's  worth  of  coloured  chalk  and 
sent  out  a  horde  of  boys  to  mark  the  sidewalks, 
the  walls  and  the  fences  with  "Vote  for  Judge 
Lindsey"  -  and  the  party  henchmen  with  brushes 
and  mops  had  not  succeeded  in  entirely  obliterat- 
ing that  "handwriting  on  the  wall."    By  midday 
the  betting  gave  odds   in   my  favour,  and  the 
excitement  among  the  politicians  was  breathless 
The   foreigners    who   could    not    speak    English 
came  to  the  polls  with  cards  on  which  friends  had 
written  for  them,  "I  want  to  vote  for  Judge  Lmd- 
sey.  '     The  women,  everywhere,  made  no  secret 
of  the  fact  that  they  intended  to  vote  for  me.    We 
began  to  believe  that  the  impossible  was  about  to 
happen  at  last. 


II: 


ll  i! 


8?0  THE  BEAST 

I  was,   nyself.  the  last  to  believe.     I  had  faitl 
m  the  ultimate  triumph  of  the  cause  for  whicl 
we  were  fighting,  but  I  did  not  believe  that  w« 
could  win  in  this  campaign.     I  was  resigned  tc 
the  loss  of  the  Juvenile  Court  to  the  agents  ol 
the  Beast,   and    I   had    made   arrangements   to 
carry  the  fight  on  in  a  lecturing  tour.    I  did  not 
credit  the  first  favourable  reports  from  my  friends 
when    the   polls   closed.     It    was   a   presidential 
campaign;  I  was  an  almost  wholly  unsupported 
candidate  for  a  small  county  office*;    and  never, 
of  recent  years  at  least,  in  a  city  like  Denver,  had 
any  independent  candidate  in  America  carried  a 
vote  under  such  circumstances.     When   one  of 
our  committee  telephoned  me,  at  my  house,  that 
I  had  been  elected  by  10,000  majority,  I  refused 
to  accept  the  report  as  even  plausible.     But  the 
details  kept  coming  in,  from  the  well-to-do  pre- 
cincts on  Capitol  Hill,  from  the  foreign  quarters, 
from  the  home  districts  of  the  working  men  and 
women,    and    even    from    the   ward     where   the 
"dives"  were  thickest;    and  all  b.i     three  gave 
me   pluralities.     At   last,   late   in   f  e  evening,   I 
was  summoned  to  the  telephone  by  a  call  from 
my  old  opponent  "Big  Steve"  — A.  M.Steven- 
son—at Republican  Headquarters;   and  he  said 

"Ben,  it's  a  d miracle.     You're  elected,  and 

that's  about  all  that's  certain.     There's  been  so 

*I  had,  However,  been  nominated  on  the  Prohibition  ticket. 


Ilu 


A  VICTORY  AT  L.VST  331 

much  'scratching'  we  don't  know  where  the  h 

we're  at!" 

Elected?     Out  of  65.000   votes  cast,   we   had 

polled,  on  the  official  count,  38,000,  which  was 

almost  as  many  as  my  two  opponents  had  together. 

Even  without  the  8,000  votes  of  which  we  had 

been  cheated  by  tlie  trick  in    the   ballot  -  and 

although  these  votes  had   been  counied   for  my 

opponents  -  I   had  a  plurality  of  almost  15,000 

The  people  had  at  last  "seenthe  cat"  and  they  had 

scratched  '  it  to  the  bone!     I  went  to  bed  that 

night,   no   longer   a   slave   among  slaves,    but   a 

freedman  m  a  community  that  had  at  last  risen 

agamst  its  masters  and  given  them  a  warning  of 

the  wrath  to  come! 

What    matter    that    the    legislative    candidates 
elected  on  that  day  on  a  reform  platform,  refused, 
m  the  session  that  followed,  to  pass  any  of  the 
election  laws  which  they  were  solemnly  pledged 
to  give  us?     What  matter  that  the  corporations 
obtained    the    election    of   Chas.    J.    Hughes    as 
United    States    Senator?     The    people    see    "the 
cat    !     They  know  what  influence  prevented  the 
passage  of  the  election  laws.     They  know    who 
elected  Hughes  and  they  know  whom  he  repre- 
sents.    They   are    on    the    trail    of    the    Beast 
and  some  day  — soon -in  Colorado,  they  will 
be  cutting  its  hide  into  cat-o'-nine-tail  strips  for 
the  backs  of  the  legislative  traitors  ana  hired 
betrayers  of  public  trust  who  have  sold  the  com- 


«M  THE  BEAST 

munity  into  slavery  and  been  rewarded  with  ai 
eminence  of  shame.  This  state,  founded  ii 
liberty,  cannot  be  governed  by  the  criminal  btel 
ligence  of  corrupt  men.  Our  people,  bom  tc 
freedom,  will  not  see  injustice  bought  and  sold  in 
their  courts,  laws  purchased  in  their  legislatures, 
cities  robbed  of  their  streets,  vice  protected  b  its 
dens,  homes  despoiled,  ^.tris  debauched,  children 
ruined,  the  poor  starved  at  their  work,  and  the 
hired  procunr ;  of  political  prostitution  enriched 
with  the  profits  of  all  this  tyranny,  this  misery, 
this  disgrace.  The  day  is  coming.  The  reck- 
oning is  due. 


»*i*ii*^*J>itli   il  mim 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

CONCLUSION 

and  iust  devote  yolS    o^heTJtn";  "^ 
have  made  enemies  who  have  Lm«!   ^  °" 

your  work.  You  can't  Lt^  '"""P?"''*  y««  in 
used  to  cret      Th.        \^u  ^^  '^^nfibutions  you 

the  at'tafsup^'^rAndnh"^^'^'  '"^-^  "^ 
iust  as  power'ful  ^I"  tht/e  e  3"'^'^  "'' 
answer  that      T..f  „,       •    "'^".^^'e.       Let  me 

of  state  DrintinJw  •      ^*''^*^=  *°  inspector 


3«8 


he  saved  the  state 


324 


THE  BEAST 


I?  'it 


$50,000  a  year  —  or  $300,000  b  the  four  years. 
The  Clerk  of  the  Supreme  Court  made  a  similar 
investigation  of  the  court's  printing,  and  effected 
a  considerable  saving;  I  do  not  know  how  much. 
But,  you  see,  this  one  small  fight  against  graft 
saved  the  people  at  least  a  half  a  million  dollars. 

As  a  result  of  my  anti-machine  decision  in  the 
licence- inspector  case,  $70,000  a  year  was  col- 
lected from  dive  keepers  and  saloon  men,  which 
had  been  left  uncollected  before  because  the 
Police  Board  inspectors  were  "protecting"  these 
men.  This  is  on  the  testimony  of  Mr.  Wm. 
Burghart,  the  inspector  who  succeeded  the  Sys- 
tem's tools.        , 

By  obtaining  a  law  forbidding  the  collection  of 
fees  for  prosecuting  children,  we  have  saved  the 
state  $10,000  a  year  since  1903  —  about  $50,000 
to  date.  Before  this  law  was  passed  two  little 
girls  who  had  stolen  a  few  pennies'  worth  of  bright 
beads  from  a  shop,  were  charged  with  burglary, 
and  the  fees  for  convicting  them  —  paid  to  the 
constable,  justice,  sheriff,  jurors,  district  attorney 
and  court  —  amounted  to  at  least  $150. 

By  sending  boys  unaccompanied  to  state  institu- 
tions we  have  saved  in  sheriff's  fees  at  least  $5,000. 
Our  books  show  that  the  sheriff's  fees  for  taking 
two  boys  to  the  State  Reformatory  at  Buena  Vista 
were  $140.  The  County  Commissioners  held 
that  I  might  not  send  prisoners  to  Buena  Vista 
without  a  sheriff  —  that  they  were  criminals  and 


CONCLUSION  325 

had  to  be  treated  as  such  —  but  our  right  to  send 
them  unaccompanied,  on  trust  and  honour,  to 
other  institutions,  could  not  be  denied. 

By  our  reform  of  the  probate  laws  we  have 
saved  estates  m  probate  at  least  $50,000  a  year 
—  $300,000  to  date. 

By  taking  all  children's  cases  into  the  County 
Court  in  1901  and  abolishbg  most  of  the  fees  for 
trying  them,  we  saved  the  county  about  $10,000. 
By  domg  the  work  of  the  Juvenile  Court  —  when 
it  was  first  instituted  —  without  salary,  we  saved 
the  county  the  cost  of  an  extra  court,  about 
$12,000  for  a  year.  By  cab  "ng  in  an  outside  judge 
and  handlmg  the  Juvenile  Court  work  in  the 
County  C;  urt,  we  saved  the  public  $10,000  a 
year  for  six  years  — $60,000. 

In  1903  Governor  Peabody  sent  an  inspector 
to  our  court  to  compare  the  cost  of  our  method 
of  handling  children's  cases  with  the  cost  under 
the  old  system;  and  m  his  message  to  the  Legisla- 
ture he  stated  that  in  eighteen  months  our  methods 
had  "resulted  in  a  saving  to  the  county  and  the 
state  of  $88,827.68."  This,  in  nine  years,  would 
amount  to  $500,000. 

In  1901  there  was  a  movement  in  Denver  to 
establish  a  Parental  School  for  chronic  truants. 
The  Legislature  even  passed  a  law  providing  for 
its  establishment.  It  would  have  cost  $50,000 
to  build  and  $25,000  a  year  to  maintain  it.  Our 
probation  and  report  system  obviated  the  necessity 


8«6  THE  BEAST 

of  such  a  Parental  School,  at  a  savmg,  to  dat« 
of  $250,000.  Our  Detention  School,  which  take 
the  place  of  the  jail  for  children,  costs  less  thaj 
$10,000  a  year  for  equipment  and  maintenance. 

By  refusing  to  allow  the  County  Commissioner 
to  appomt  political  "workers"  to  sinecures  m  th( 
County  Court,  we  saved  in  three  years  aboui 
$18,000. 

Durmg  the  seven  years  that  I  was  judge  of  th« 
County  Court  we  not  only  paid  all  the  salaries 
of  the  judge  and  the  clerks  of  the  court  out  of  the 
fees  paid  by  litigants,  but  we  turned  over  to  the 
county  more  than  $50,000  earned  by  the  court.  So 
that  while  I  was  judge  of  the  County  Court,  the 
county  not  only  did  not  pay  us  a  penny  for  our  work, 
but  we  paid  the  county  $50,000  for  letting  us  do  the 
work.  And  if  you  will  add  up  the  preceding  items 
of  saving,  you  will  find  that  we  paid  the  county 
$50,000  for  lettmg  us  save  it  more  than  two 
millions! 

But  the  real  glory  of  our  struggle  has  not  been 
Its  savmg  of  dollars  and  cents,  but  of  flesh  and 
blood.  When  I  first  visited  the  Industrial  School 
at  Golden,  I  found  armed  guards  in  the  reforma- 
tory buildings  and  some  of  the  boys  shackled 
with  ball  and  chain  on  the  grounds;  I  found  the 
iron  boot  m  use,  the  boys  being  flogged  in  the 
presence  of  their  fellows,  and  many  of  the  usual 
prison  brutalities  practised  on  the  miserable  and 
rebellious  children.     To-day  there  are  no  armed 


^.a.»*-J  ^  .4  -,:  4,*!.^ 


'  C^  >»AA.kJiA)|    ■!'— *-'*^^j   (f 


■^  ^■^^■WdU.iajt.'jAAJi 


CONCLUSION  3j, 

8i»rdi,   DO   chains,   »„  p,i,„„   „,|,,,„,.     „ 

from  their  parents,  accompany  them  to  th/,  • 
road  station   unwatched.   In/ ll   themse  1" 
to    their    duties;  they    learn    useful    trT^r        J 

the  cty;  and  every  last  boy  of  the  four  hunTreS 
at  the  day's  end.  was  back  in  his  dormitory  S 
are  happy;  they  are  learning  to  be  honest  health? 
useful  citizens,  instead  of  bnitalized  anH  r  K  i  •  ^' 
criminals.  Of  a  Sunday,  in  S  ehapel  ttS 
t"'ir:i  tT/*'^  ^-"'»"-  to'tlr  th  m 

struggle  _rf  we  had  nothing  to  show  for  it  but 
this    reformed    "orison"  —  fl. of    c      , '""^  "  ''"* 

St Mz;'  ^'^'''"*'^  ''''^''''  ^  '=•'-'  •'f  -f- 

When  I  went  on  the  County  Bench  the  div. 

tTlnl^rf "  "^"^  ^"'°°"  "'"  who  deLtctd 
boys  and  girls  were  not  only  protected  by  the 


328 


THE  BEAST 


police  and  other  officials,  but  by  the  technicalitiei 
of  the   law.     It    was  impossible    to  convict  th( 
saloon    man    or    the  gambler  unless   we    coulc 
prove  the  serving  of  "liquor "to  young  peoplt 
or   their    participation   in  the   gambling    game 
and    this    was   always    difficult.     Now   we   have 
"contributory    delinquency"    laws    that    requin 
the  keeper  of  a  saloon  or  any  disreputable  resort 
to  forbid  boys  and  girls  frequenting  it;  and  he 
can  be  punished  if  they  are  so  much  as  seen  there. 
We   have   obtained    laws    that    will    permit   oui 
probation    officers    to    arrest    him;  and    we    can 
ourselves   file   a    complaint    against    him    if   the 
District  Attorney  refuses  to  act.     The  result  is 
that  no  man  or  woman  in  Denver  —  no,  not  the 
head  of  the  System  and  king  of  the  corporations 
himself  — has   political    "pull"   enough   to   save 
him  from  the  punishments  of  the  law  if  he  oflfends 
against   the  poorest  slum  child  in   Denver.     No 
one  can  know  how  much  that  means  to  the  com- 
munity  unless   he   can    remember   the   horrible 
traffic  in  young  virtue  that  used  to  make  our 
streets  and  alleys  in  the  dive  district  the  open 
roads  to  physical  and  moral  hell;  and  no  one  who 
knows  it  can  doubt  that  our  fight  has  been  a 
thousand,  thousand  times  worth  while  —  yes,  even 
if  this  alone  had  been  the  one  result  of  it! 

We  have  obtained  an  effective  registration  law 
that  prevents  most  of  the  ballot-box  stuffing.  We 
have  obtained  a  probate  code  that  is  conceded  by 


.L 


■  <i»  mi 


CONCLUSION  329 

lawyers  to  be  one  of  the  best  in  America.     We 
have  obtained   amendments   to   the  child-labour 
laws,    affording   children    better   protection    and 
addmg  a  jail  penalty  for  violation  instead  of  a 
ight  fine;  amendments  to  the  compulsory  school 
law    requiring   a   complete   school   year   for   al 
children,  and  providing  for  the  relief  of  needy 
ehidren;    laws    forbidding     the    prosecution     of 
children   for  crime  and   requiring  that   they   be 
treated   under  the  chancery  jurisdiction,  and  the 
ni  es  of  equity,  as  wards  of  the  state,  needing  "aid 

help,  assistance  and  encouragement" ;  a  provision  in 
the  pity  charter  and  the  statutes  of  the  state,  forbid- 
dmg  the  placing  of  children  under  fourteen  years  of 

X!.e'^i.''"'^"''"I'''^''"^*^^'^"''-home-schoo 
where  they  may  be  cared  for;  a  set  of  laws, 
enforceable  m  both  chancery  and  criminal  courts 
makmg  parents  responsible  for  neglectir-.  their 
children  or  setting  them  a  bad  example;  °a  l"; 
for  the  special  care  of  dependent  children,  nro- 
vidmg  for  the  inspection  of  all  homes  and  institu- 

S;I       7'  P"'".".'  ^"^  '^^  '""'^  °f  dependent 
Children,   a  law  requiring  parents,  who  are  able 

o  pay.  to  support  their  children  in  state  institu- 

W  s/oon'f  ^":r'^^'"g  «'-phan  children  at 
least  $2,000  from  the  estate  of  the  parents  before 

right  to  place  orphan  children  with  persons 
professing  the  same  religion  as  the  parents;  a 
law  forbiddmg  any  court  to  take  a  child  away 


?■:■: 


11 


330  THE  BEAST 

from  a  parent  until  the  parent's  rights  have 
been  carefully  guarded  and  adjudicated  upon' 
probation  laws  for  adults;  and  a  dozen  other 
minor  laws  and  amendments  of  similar  purport 
and  eileet. 

We  have  helped  to  obtain  night  schools  in  Den- 
ver,   ungraded    schools    for    backward    children, 
public  playgi-ounds,  and  public  baths.     We  have 
failed  to  obtain  trade  schools,  but  we  have  not 
ceased    our   efforts    to    obtain    them.     We   have 
established  summer  camps  for  poor  children  in  the 
mountains,  obtained  work  for  them  in  the  beet 
fields  and  fruit  orchards,  and  found  employment 
and  assistance    for  thousands    of  city  children. 
Our   Juvenile   Improvement  Association  for   the 
betterment  and  protection  of  the  child  has  spread 
over  the  whole  country.     Our  work  for  the  children 
has  been  taken  up  by  President  Roosevelt  in  a  mes- 
sage to  Congress,  by  John  Hay,  Secretary  of  State, 
by  Herbert  Gladstone  in  a   recommendation   to 
the    British    House   of   Commons,    by   Professor 
Freudenthal,  as  a  representative  of  the  German 
Emperor,  and  by  officials  from  countries  in  all 
parts    of   the   world.     Of   all    the   thousands   of 
children  whom  we  have  dealt  with,  not  more  than  10 
per  cent,  have  been  returned  for  a  second  offence; 
and  we  estimate  that  95  per  cent,  have  "made 
good  "  in  the  end.     No  one  can  know  what  a  saving 
of  young  citizens  this  means.     One  of  the  tramway 
company's  detectives  is  authority  for  the  statement 


CONCLUSION  331 

that  of  1.000  boys  whom  he  has  brought  to  our 

the  railroad,  only  one  class  of  boys  has  ever  been 
returned  for  a  second  offence -'and  these  we^ 
not  more  than  a  dozen  newsboys  who  "  hopped  "on 
thecarstoselltheirpapers.  Under  the  oldTethoSs 
of  cnmmal  prosecution  and  jail  sentence,  from  65  to 

Z^T"'.1  ''^^  '''"'^''  were  returned  to  the  jaH 
for  a  second  term  within  five  years;  and  every  term 
m  jail  meant  a  term  in  a  public  school  of  crim^ 
that  made  the  children  worse   mstead  of  b^u'r 
Jery  few   of   these   laws -and   none   of  the 
important  ones -could  have  been  obtained  with- 
out breakmg  with  the  political  system  by  whLh 
he  corporations  profit  and  which  their  bribes  and 
mfluence  maintam.     Few  of  these  laws  could  have 
been  obtamed  without  first  rousing  the  communis 
to  a  sense  of  its  responsibilities  to  the  child  and 

T^Mu     °!^°''^^  '"  '••«  P°""'='''  powers.     We 
should  have  been  false  to  the  child  had  we  failed 
to  pomt  out  that  the  rule  of  social,  economt 
mdustnal  and  political  mjustice  maintained  b^ 

th^MlH^"'  w°'  ""^  responsible  for  much  of 
the  child  s  misfortune  and  most  of  the  increase  in 

failed  to  help  m  educating  the  public  to  see  that  the 
greatest  wrongs  to  the  home,  the  child  and  the  com- 
munity are  mflicted  by  the  rich  criminals  of  the 
community.    And  as  for  the  contributions  that  we 


888  THE  BEAST 

might  have  obtained  from  the  corporations  bj 
kneehng  to  them,  let  me  boast  that  by  asserting  my 
mdependence  and  going  on  the  public  platform  to 
obtam  our  reforms.  I  have  been  able  in  nine  years 
to  earn  enough  as  a  lecturer  to  be  able  to  donate 
•20.000  to  our  work  out  of  my  earnings  and  my 
salaiy;  and  this  is  a  good  deal  more  than  we 
could  have  begged  from  our  corporation  masters 
even  if  we  had  kissed  the  ground  in  front  of 
their  feet. 

Observe,  too.  that  these  results  have  been 
gamed  by  the  "picayune"  fight  of  a  judge  of  a 
small  county  court,  without  money,  without 
mfluence"  and  for  the  most  part  without  an 
organization.  Imagine  what  could  have  been 
done  by  a  leader  of  the  people  with  a  political 
following  and  a  place  in  the  Legislature  from 
which  to  speak!  What  defeats  might  not  have 
been  turned  into  victories!  What  losses  to  the 
people  might  not  have  been  made  unimaginable 
gains ! 

Consider  these  facts:  In  our  first  city  charter 
we  had  provisions  giving  the  city  power,  from 
time  to  time,  to  "make  reasonable  regulations 
concerning  the  operation  and  use  of  all  franchise 
rights  and  privileges  operated  and  used  in  the 
city  and  county,  and  to  fix  reasonable  n.  mum 
charges  for  water,  light,  telephone  service,  .treet 
railway  fares  and  other  utilities  or  properties 
devoted  to  the  public  use."     This  charter  was 


CONCLUSION  338 

defeated  and  these  rights  denied  the  citizens  by 
the  corporations  with  the  help  of  Boss  Speer  and 
his  Democratic  city  machine  and  Police  Com- 
missioner Frank  Adams  and  his  protected  "dive 
element." 

By  the  use  of  the  Legislature,  the  courts  and 
public  officials,  the  corporations  are  establishing  a 
power  trust  that  has  obtained  incredible  rights  in 
all  the  watersheds  and  power  streams  surrounding 
Denver,  without  any  reservation  to  the  state  of  the 
people's  rights  in  these  natural  resources ;  so  that  our 
children  and  our  children's  children,  for  all  time 
will  be  compelled  to  pay  the  heirs  of  the  Beast 
for  the  nght  to  use  the  water  power  that  should 
have  been  an  asset  of  the  community  instead 
of  an  asset  of  the  Beast. 

Some  of  the  coal  companies  have  obtained  from 
the  State  Land  Board  hundreds  of  acres  of  land 
devoted  by  the  state  to  the  support  of  the  schools. 
Some  of  this  land  is  so  rich  in  coal  that  it  is  worth 
at  least  »2,000  an  acre;  and  the  coal  companies 
have  obtamed  it  for  nominal  prices.  These 
frauds  have  been  notorious  for  years  —  and  not 
less  notorious  has  been  the  recent  failure  of  the 
courts  to  punish  the  guilty  state  official  who  was 
the  tool  of  the  land  robbers. 

All  laws,  such  as  the  eight-hour  laws,  the 
employer's  liability  law,  and  laws  requiring  the 
use  of  safety  appliances  have  been  either 
def^Med  or  laad^  ^effective  by  the  corporation 


884  THE  BEAST 

control   of  ihe  Legislatures    that     should    have 
passed    the    laws  or  of  the  public  officials   who 
should  enforce  them.    The  State  Railroad  Com- 
mission  has  been  a  pitiful  joke.     The  system  of 
railroad   rebates   and   unjust   discriminations   in 
rai  road  charges  has  flourished  poisonously     The 
railroad  lobby,  with  one  of  Senator  Teller's  brothew 
as  attorney  for   the   Union  Pacific  Railroad,  has 
strangled  every  bill  that  attempted  to  regulate  the 
railroads  for  the  public  good;  so  that,  for  example, 
the  son  of  ex-United  States  Senator  Dorsey  (the 
other  member  of  the  Teller  law  firm)   was  able 
to  boast  to  the  General  Solicitor  of  the  Union 
1  acifac  Railroad,  in  a  letter  written  from  Denver 
m  May.  1903:  "At  the  last  session  of  the  Legisla- 
ture, although  many  bills  were  introduced  which 
would  greatly  prejudice  the  railroad  company's 
interests,  no  legislation  was  enacted  to  our  dis- 
advantage.   On  the  contrary  several  acts  wer« 
passed  which  were  favourable  to  railroad  com- 
panies, some  of  which  had  been  caused  to  be 
introduced     by     the     Union     Pacific     Railroad 
Company." 

One  of  the  bills  referred  to  as  prejudicial  to  the 
railroad  company's  interests  -  according  to  a 
previous  letter  written  by  Teller  and  Dorsey  in 
February,  1903  ~  was  "House  bill  No.  181.  by 
m.  Frewen."  which  provided  "penalties  for 
failure  to  comply  with  existing  statutes  in 
respect  to  safety   appliances,  etc."    Teller  and 


CONCLUSION  833 

Dorsey  reported  that  "everj-  effort  should  be  made 
to  defonf  this  bill,  and  enquired.  "  Will  you  kindly 
advise  us  whether  Union  Pacific  Railroad  Com- 
pany is  willing  to  pay  its  share  of  any  reasonable 
expense  mcurred  in  this  connection?"     President 
Burt  replied  that  the  bill  was  one  of  those  "more 
or  less  objectionable"  and  "should  l)e  defeated." 
Whatever  expen.se,"   he   wrote,   "needs   to   be 
incurred  m  connection  with  legislative  matters, 
you   are   authorized    to    make."     The    bill    was 
killed  m  committee.    And  let  me  add,  as  a  com- 
mentary on  the  defeat  of  such  laws  requiring  the 
safeguarding  of  workmen  engaged   in   dangerous 
occupations,  that  in  the  nation's  last  generation 
of  childhood,  32,000  childivn  were  made  orphans 
by  coal-mme  explosions  alone,  and  three-fourtlis  of 
these  explosions  might  have  been  prevented  by 
the  use  of  safety  appliances  such  as  the  govern- 
ments require  in  Germany,  Belgium  and  other 
European  countries.* 

loJo/'lf  ^^^^  ^^'°''  ''^  ^^^  Legislature  (April. 
1909)  all  attempts  to  pass  the  "platform  pledges" 
on  which  the  Democrats  had  gained  office  were 
defeated  by  the  united  corporation  legislators 
among  the  Democrats  and  Republicans  alike 
V\e  could  obtain  no  anti-straight  ticket  law.  no 
direct  nomination  law,  no  corrupt-practices  act 
—  no  measure  designed  to  restore  representative 


^^  THE  BEAST 

government  and  overthrow  the  rule  of  the  Beast 
by  freeing  our  elections  from  the  control  of  the 
corporations^    The    same  Legislature  killed   the 
b.  I  gmng   he  people  a  court  in  which  to  contest 
a  fraudulent  franchise-election,  although  the  attor- 
neys for  the  corporations  had  contended  in   mv 
court  that,  until  such  a  bill  was  passed,  there  was 
no  court  on  earth  in  which  the  people  could  recover 
the    hundred    million    dollars'    worth    of   public 
property  that  had  l,een  stolen  from  them  by  the 
franchLse-election    frauds.     When    '-e    bill    was 
Killed,  the  Legislature  was  controlled  by  the  cor- 
poration machine  that  elected  Chas.  J.  Hughes  to 
the  United  Stales  Senate;  and  Chas.  J.  Hughes 
was  one  of  the  attorneys  who  defended  the  cor- 
porations m  the  franchise-election  contests.     When 
the  bill  was  killed  its  fate  depended  most  upon  a 
Special   Orders"   committee    of  three  men.  of 
whom    two   were    Senator  "Billy"  Adams,  the 
most   notorious    corporation    champion    in    the 
Senate,  and   Senator  Rodney   J.   Bardwell.    the 
paid   attorney   of   the   Gas   and   Electric    Com- 
pany.   And  this  same  Bardwell  introduced,  and 
the  Legislature  gaily  passed,  two  bills  giving  the 
Gas  and  Electric  Company  "special  privileges" 
in  prosecuting  persons  who  stole  gas  or  electricity, 
by  practically  providing  that  the  accused  person 
in  such  cases  should  be  required  to  prove  himself 
mnocent  or  go  to  jail  for  as  much  as  ninety  days 
for  stealmg  gas!    No  bill  to  protect  the  people 


CONCLUSION  337 

from  the  steal  of  a  gas  fnin<l.ise  worth  n  fortune 
-and  a  special  hill  to  protect  the  gas  comimny 
from  a  steal  of  gas  worth  ten  cents!  A  bill  to 
rcfiuire  a  citizen  to  prove  hir  ., ''  innocent  of 
having  tanif)erecl  with  a  damage!  gas  metre - 
and  no  hill  to  allow  the  citizens  the  right  to  prove 
the  gas  company  guilty  of  having  tampered  with 
a  franchise  election! 

The  same  Legislature  .l.feated  a  Public  Utilities 
Bill  that  would  have  ,.rove,ited  the  Gas  Company 
from  watering  its  sto.k:,  and  bonds  twenty-five 
millions.  Twenty -fiv^  ,ni;iions  >„  which  the 
citizens  of  Denver  n,,,sl  p.,v  interest!  Money 
stolen  from  our  homes  l.y  a  m.lhud  more  refined 
but  none  the  less  crimin;,!  tliun  the  entry  of  a 
second-story  man." 

There  is  no  end  to  it.     I  might  go  on  in  this  way 
to  fill  a  volume  with  instances  of  proof  that  the 
u,   f[  ^°'°'«*1°   "  exploited   and  the  people 
robbed  by  a  government   by  the  Beast   and  for 
the   Beast.     A  system   of  corruption   that   aims 
to  pick  the  corruptible  man  for  pubhV-  service 
and  refuses  the  honest  one  an  opportunity  to  serve' 
has  made  most  of  the  public  life  and  administra- 
tion of  public  affairs  in  Colorado  a  gigantic  failure 
a  huge  oppression.     The  functions  of  government 
are  no  longer  discharged  as  against  the  corpora- 
ions,   except   where  an   error  of  judgment    on 
the  part  of   the   corporations,  or  an  unforeseen 
frustration  of  their  plans,  has  permitted  an  honest 


■:1> 


338  THE  BEAST 

man  to  obtain  an  opportunity  of  honestly  filling 
a  public  office. 

The  ignorant  and  the  dishonest  apologists  of 
the  System  contend  that  the  men  of  wealth  have, 
in  self-defence,  merely  corrupted  corruption  and 
bought  up  the  politicians  who  were  preying  upon 
them.     You  might  believe  it,   if  there  had  ever 
been  a  case  in  our  courts  in  which  a  corporation 
had    prosecuted    a    legislator    for    blackmail    or 
attempted  to  defend  itself  from  a  dishonest  public 
official.     You    might    believe    it,    if    you    could 
believe  that  the  boys  who  steal  "junk"  are  prey- 
ing upon  the  junk  dealer  who  induces  them  to 
steal  it.     And  even  if  you  believed  it,  you  would 
have  to  concede  that  there  is  no  patriotism  in 
business,    no     responsibility     to     the    state,    no 
obligation    of    citizenship    to    expose    dishonesty 
m   public  office  or  oppose  the    profit  of  it,  and 
no    higher  sense   in   the   man  of  wealth   than  a 
criminal    self-bterest   ar      Ihe    cowardice    of   a 
knave. 

Such  an  excuse  —  such  an  apology  —  it  is 
impossible  to  accept.  Every  man  who  has  had 
anything  to  do  with  politics  knows  that  it  is  a  lie. 
Our  L«>gislatures  have  been  bought  by  the  cor- 
porations not  for  self-protection ;  our  courts  have 
been  corrupted  in  no  struggle  against  injustice; 
the  "dives"  have  been  subsidized  against  society 
not  because  society  oppressed  the  good.  The 
whole  System  is  an  alliance  of  law  breakers  against 


CONCLUSION  339 

the  sources,  agents  and  penalties  of  the  law  It 
IS  the  alliance  of  a  "plunderbund"  -a  compact 
among  thieves  and  criminals,  rich  and  poor,  for 
the  subversion  of  law  and  the  protection  of  illegal 
profit.  ° 

Even  though  I  had  never  succeeded  in  doing 
anythmg  to   check   this   System,  to   oppose   this 
corruption,  I  should  still  be  content  that  I  had 
fought  It.     For  such  a  defence  of  liberty,  it  is  a 
privilege  to  fight.     It  is  an  honour  to  be  defeated 
jn  It.     It  is  a  happiness  beyond  glory  to  succeed, 
however  obscurely,  in  the  smallest  struggle  for  it 
It  is  my  one  hope  that  as  long  as  I  live  I  may  be 
able  I  may  be  found  worthy.  I  may  be  considered 
fit.  to  devote  myself  to  this  allegiance,  and  in  this 
cause  to  defend  my  state  and  its  people,  my  own 
birthright    and    our    children's    inheritance,    our 
riglit  to  freedom  and  our  institutions  of  freedom 
that  are  founded  in  that  right. 

Well  I  have  done.  I  have  tried  to  write  with- 
out malice  -to  do  no  one  an  injustice  -  to  tell 
the  truth,  without  fear  as  without  favour,  in  the 
firm  belief  that  the  truth  shall  make  us  free  I 
shall  be  called  "an  enemy  of  the  state."  because 
1  have  attacked  the  enemies  of  the  state  — for 
the  corporations  in  Colorado,  like  King  Louis  in 
France,  hold  majestically.  "The  state.'  It  is  I'» 
I  shall  be  called  a  tiaitor  to  the  community  because 
I  have  tried  to  expose  the  traitors  in  the  com- 


w 


840  THE  BEAST 

munityjand   the   traitorous   newspapers   of   th. 

shall  be  cal^d  "a  blackener  of  the  fai,  nZe  o 
Colorado"  because  I  have  named  the  meHho 

^:-T:''  '^'r''^  ^'  P-tituteS  di: 

«do-for  no  men  hate  the  light  more  than  the 
21  ^u^'  ^^  ''''  '="'°'«  ^Wch  the  Ii!tt 

laSwe    ""r    ^'P    '•'-'-Heaven  Jffp 
TlunniJ    "*/'™8»'^«  toward  better  things. 

wii^i::rSe:brwu^rthts£ 

.m^s^worth  the  agony.     U*  us^^t;;^^'^* 


THE  BMD 


•s   of  the 
*  cry.    I 
name  of 
men  who 
ted  Colo- 
than  the 
the  light 
I'en  help 
r  things, 
ilization. 
end,  the 
;le.     Let 


'%-n  ^\ 


